A Place Called Home: Writings on the Midwestern Small Town

2004 Minnesota Book Award Winner

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.

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, most recently, 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.