History books are often saddled — or blessed, depending on one's perspective — by the context in which they are written.
Kristin L. Hoganson's new book, The Heartland: An American History, is a product of its time — seeking to answer questions about the Midwest that have arisen since the election of Donald Trump.
What do people living there want? Who are they? As commentators played the difference between so-called "coastal elites" and everyone else, interest in understanding whether the Midwest really is the isolationist, change-averse region it was made out to be grew.
In the introduction, Hoganson, a history professor at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, describes the inaccuracies she hopes to debunk thusly:
"[The] U.S. heartland is more often seen as static and inward-looking, the quintessential home referenced by 'homeland security,' the steadfast stronghold of the nation in an age of mobility and connectedness, the crucible of resistance to the global, the America of America first."
To do this, she begins at the beginning, using the twin Illinois cities of Champaign and Urbana, rural though pushed Democratic by the large population of college students and professors, as an avatar for the region writ large. Before the European colonists made their way west, the land belonged to the Kickapoo people, a Native American and Indigenous Mexican tribe. She opens with them for two reasons: The first is that she thinks their presences has been historically undercovered; the second is to emphasize that the Midwest became part of the United States of America as we know it through forced relocation and colonization. In other words, Hoganson reframes "the heartland" from a passive place to an active one at the front lines, reshaping global politics by expanding a nation.
