"First published in 1956, Leonard Hall's A Journal of the Seasons on an Ozark Farm is an affectionate chronicle of the round of the season on a working farm in the eastern Missouri Ozarks. Hall, a naturalist and newspaperman, describes such homely farm chores as dehorning a calf so clearly that one paragraph teaches just how the work is done. His accounts of the events that mark the changing seasons--migrating geese, budding trees, hunting, fishing, butchering, and simply walking through fields and woods--are remarkable for their unpretentious nostalgic beauty"--from back cover.

The social transformation of the American Midwest in the postwar era For many Americans, the Midwest is a vast unknown. In Remaking the Heartland, Robert Wuthnow sets out to rectify this. He shows how the region has undergone extraordinary social transformations over the past half-century and proven itself surprisingly resilient in the face of such hardships as the Great Depression and the movement of residents to other parts of the country. He examines the heartland's reinvention throughout the decades and traces the social and economic factors that have helped it to survive and prosper. Wuthnow points to the critical strength of the region's social institutions established between 1870 and 1950--the market towns, farmsteads, one-room schoolhouses, townships, rural cooperatives, and manufacturing centers that have adapted with the changing times. He focuses on farmers' struggles to recover from the Great Depression well into the 1950s, the cultural redefinition and modernization of the region's image that occurred during the 1950s and 1960s, the growth of secondary and higher education, the decline of small towns, the redeployment of agribusiness, and the rapid expansion of edge cities. Drawing his arguments from extensive interviews and evidence from the towns and counties of the Midwest, Wuthnow provides a unique perspective as both an objective observer and someone who grew up there. Remaking the Heartland offers an accessible look at the humble yet strong foundations that have allowed the region to endure undiminished.

In 1945, after an unsuccessful stint as a farmer in upper New York, a brief stay in Chicago, and the publication of three more books, Hauser purchased three hundred acres along the Mississippi near the little town of Wittenberg, Missouri (which succumbed to the Great Flood of 1993).".

Shows how small farming communities--the heart and soul of America--are both besieged and determined to survive, and reveals, through vivid storytelling, how the future of America is being played out on the high plains of Kansas.

**** The first edition (1989) of this appealing popular reference is cited in ARBA 1990, Sheehy Suppl., and--we blush--RandR Book News. It provides a detailed yet concise portrait of every state (as well as D.C. and Puerto Rico), combining facts and statistics to profile the state's history, economy, population, cultural development, natural resources, and political system. Each chapter concludes with an extensive bibliography of nonfiction and reference volumes and an annotated list of literary works (fiction, memoirs, and biographies) in which the state and its people play a major role. Included in this revised and updated edition are two new sections, one covering the environment, the other presenting unusual state facts. For a broad audience. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

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