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A Place Called Home

Writings on the Midwestern Small Town

Edited by Richard O. Davies, Joseph A. Amato & David R. Pichaske

STATUS: AVAILABLE
$24.95, paper, ISBN 0-87351-451-3
445 pp., notes
SUBJECTS: American Studies/History/Sociology

Phone Orders: 1-800-621-2736

About the Editors | Reviews & Praise | Table of Contents | Read an Excerpt

The dynamic Midwestern small town--from its idyllic beginnings to its imminent decline--explored and celebrated in thirty-four selections of cultural history, fiction, and poetry, both classic and contemporary.

The Midwestern small town has long held an iconic place in American culture--from the imaginings of Sinclair Lewis's Main Street and Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio to Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon. But the reality is much more complex, as the small town has been a study in transition from its very inception. In A Place Called Home, editors Richard O. Davies, Joseph A. Amato, and David R. Pichaske offer the first comprehensive examination of the Midwestern small town and its evolving nature from the 1800s to the present.

This rich collection, gleaned from the best writings of historians, novelists, social scientists, poets, and journalists, features not only such well-known authors as Sherwood Anderson, Carol Bly, Willa Cather, Hamlin Garland, Langston Hughes, Garrison Keillor, William Kloefkorn, Sinclair Lewis, Susan Allen Toth, and Mark Twain but also many lesser known and exceptionally talented writers. Five chronological sections trace the founding, growth, and decline of the Midwestern town, and introductory comments illuminate its ever-changing face. The result is a wide-ranging collection of writings on the community at the heart of America.

The anthology is divided into five chronological sections. Selections in Part One, "The Formative Years," fondly recall the early small town and carefully explore its development. Part Two, "Main Street Ascendant," commemorates the 1920s "high tide" with descriptions of community-building exercises but also includes "the revolt from the village," which probed negative attributes of the small town, including complacency and enforced conformity. The beginnings of a long-term slide are explored in Part Three, "Depression, War, and Resurgence," as shoppers were drawn away from Main Street to department stores and shopping centers elsewhere and as newly graduated students began seeking brighter opportunities in the cities. In Part Four, "Crisis on Main Street," the issues facing the small town become too great to ignore: dwindling family farms, the ubiquitous Wal-Mart and its effect on Main Street businesses, and the loss of local services including banks and nursing homes. In Part Five, "From Farm Crisis to the Present," writers explore the decline of agricultural communities and the steps some small towns are taking to ensure their viability.

About the Editors

RICHARD O. DAVIES is University Foundation Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is the author of Main Street Blues: The Decline of Small Town America and several other books focusing on twentieth-century American history.

JOSEPH A. AMATO is professor of Rural and Regional Studies at Southwest State University in Marshall, Minnesota. He is the author of numerous books, including Dust: A History of the Small and the Invisible, The Great Jerusalem Artichoke Circus: The Buying and Selling of the American Dream, and Rethinking Home: A Case for Writing Local History.

DAVID R. PICHASKE is professor of English literature at Southwest State University. He is a specialist in the literature of the rural Midwest and is the editor of Late Harvest: Rural American Writing and author of A Generation in Motion: Popular Music and Culture in the Sixties.

Reviews & Praise

"A superb introduction to the history, culture, and social significance of small-town life in the Midwest. Anyone interested in the history of the Midwest will find this collection provocative, exciting, and suggestive for further reading and research." -- R. Douglas Hurt, editor of The Rural West since World War II and author of American Agriculture: A Brief History

"The editors of this wonderful collection challenge us to consider the future as well as the past of that iconic American place, the Midwestern small town." -- Andrew R. L. Cayton, coauthor of The Midwest and the Nation: Rethinking the History of an American Region

Introduction: Small Towns, Of Thee We Sing

PART I: THE FORMATIVE YEARS, 1790-1900
     Richard C. Wade, "The Economic Base" from The Urban Frontier
     John Mack Faragher, "It Answers Well for a Village," from Sugar Creek
     Mark Twain, selections from The Autobiography of Mark Twain
     Edward Eggleston, "A Private Lesson from a Bulldog," from The Hoosier School-Master
     John C. Hudson, "Railroad Towns," from Plains Country Towns
     Hamlin Garland, "A 'Good Fellow's' Wife," from Main-Travelled Roads

PART II: MAIN STREET ASCENDANT, 1890-1930
     Lewis E. Atherton, "Belonging to the Community," from Main Street on the Middle Border
     Willa Cather, "The Hired Girls," from My Ántonia
     Vachel Lindsay, selections from The Poetry of Vachel Lindsay
     Clyde Brion Davis, "The Budding of Art," from The Age of Indiscretion
     Langston Hughes, "Storm," from Not Without Laughter
     Sinclair Lewis, excerpt from Main Street
     Edgar Lee Masters, selections from Spoon River Anthology
     Sherwood Anderson, excerpt from Poor White
     Ruth Suckow, "The Resurrection," from Midland Magazine
     Edna Ferber, excerpt from A Peculiar Treasure
     Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, "Inventions Re-making Leisure," from Middletown

PART III: DEPRESSION, WAR, AND RESURGENCE, 1930-60
     Alan R. Woolworth, personal reminiscence, "Growing Up in Clear Lake"
     Catherine McNicol Stock, "Compromise and Its Limits," from Main Street in Crisis
     William Kloefkorn, poems, from various collections
     Richard O. Davies, "The Last Picture Show," from Main Street Blues
     Susan Allen Toth, "Nothing Happened," from Blooming

PART IV: CRISIS ON MAIN STREET, 1960-90
     Dave Etter, selections from Alliance, Illinois
     Carol Bly, "Quietly Thinking Over Things at Christmas," from Letters from the Country
     John Knoepfle, selections from poems from the sangamon
     Joseph A. Amato and John W. Meyer, "If the Home Team Doesn't Win," from The Decline of Rural Minnesota
     Garrison Keillor, "Sumus Quod Sumus," from Lake Wobegon Days
     Dan Gerber, "Hardball," from Grass Fires
     Kent Meyers, "Two-Speed," from Light in the Crossing

PART V: FROM FARM CRISIS TO THE PRESENT
     Osha Gray Davidson, "Decline and Denial," from Broken Heartland
     Donald D. Stull, "On the Cutting Edge: Changes in Midwestern Meatpacking Communities"
     Norbert Blei, "Village Character: The Pioneer Store," from Winter Book
     Jeff Glasser, "A Broken Heartland," from U.S. News and World Report
     Joseph A. Amato, "Business First and Always," from Rethinking Home

Suggestions for Further Reading
Credits
About the Editors
Index