In Appreciation of Stickiness and the Midwest with Jon Lauck

Often lampooned as boring, bland, and less important than other regions in the country, might it be that the Midwest actually has its own regional identity and a story worth telling? Jon Lauck, a professor at the University of South Dakota thinks so. In this episode Kevin talks to Jon about his excellent new book The Good Country: A History of the American Midwest 1800-1900. They explore what made the region from Ohio to the Dakotas different from New England and from the South and why the old virtues of the Midwest might just be worth pursuing today.

Books:

The Good Country: A History of the American Midwest, 1800–1900 

Social Conservatism for the Common Good: A Protestant Engagement with Robert P. George

The Interior Borderlands: Regional Identity in the Midwest and Great Plains

Main Street

The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded American is Tearing Us Apart

Southern evangelicals and the social order, 1800-1860