In this engaging book, Kristin L. Hoganson attempts to overturn the myth of the Midwest as drowsy and disconnected from the rest of the world. An émigré from the East Coast, the author centers her story around Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, where she teaches at the University of Illinois. She bristles at descriptions of her adopted region as isolated, provincial, or “flyover country.” She draws a page from Thomas Bender's edited volume, Rethinking American History and a Global Age (2002), following her subjects wherever they go. She portrays border-crossings, commodity production, and the environment with equal enthusiasm. In other words, while she starts with a small city, she seeks to do global history.
The author views Champaign as a good starting point to figure out if the rural and small-town communities at the center of the heartland myth “have always been as insular as the myth suggests” (xxv). She understands that Champaign...
