John E. Miller’s many books include Governor Philip F. La Follette, the Wisconsin Progressives, and the New Deal and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little Town: Where History and Literature Meet.
"This book represents a new and imaginative reconception of the
American experience. . . . Especially noteworthy is the emphasis on
material culture."--David M. Katzman, author of Seven Days a Week:
Women and Domestic Service in Industrializing America"Small towns
are an important part of Americana, not only because 30 million
people live in them, but also because we hear so often that they
are the 'real America' where homespun virtue still prevails.
Miller's book unpacks that mythology, showing its manifestations in
the lives of small town boys who pulled themselves up by their
bootstraps and made good. I look forward to a sequel about small
town girls!"--Robert Wuthnow, author of Small-Town America: Finding
Community, Shaping the Future"In Small-Town Dreams John Miller ably
illustrates the importance of small towns in American history and
culture through a gallery of portraits of prominent figures born
and raised in them--all going to show you can take the boy out of
the town but not the town out of the boy."--Richard Lingeman,
Senior Editor of The Nation and author of Small Town America and
biographies of Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis"This valuable
and superbly written study of midwestern farm and small-town
boyhoods and subsequent careers will captivate hosts of readers.
The smell of corn and hogs, the sounds and silences of hamlets and
county seats, and schoolyard athletics, classroom instruction, and
theatrical presentation--all redolently here. A first-rate regional
study."--Richard W. Etulain, author of Re-imagining the Modern
American West: A Century of Fiction, History, and Art
"This book would make an excellent addition to collections that
focus on region and boyhood, as well as to collections with an
emphasis on twentieth-century American culture."--Great Plains
Quarterly"Miller has crafted an expertly researched, well-written,
and scholarly volume of biographies of twenty-two individuals whose
formative years were in the Midwest"--Journal of Illinois
History"The stories are well told and engagingly written, and the
notion of exploring the connection between America's small-town
past and its urban present is well worthwhile."--Michigan
Historical Review"A deeply-researched and brilliantly-conceived
account of the small town experiences of a series of Midwesterners
whose names many over-50 readers will instantly recall."--Claremont
Review of Books"[Miller] shows both the cultural shifts that have
changed the Midwest (and along with it, the nation) and the
persistent, shaping power of place on individuals and the national
consciousness."--Minnesota History"The essays are well researched,
detailed, and strongly written to create a clear sense of the
effect that this peculiar sort of American place had on a given
man."--Annals of Iowa"In a wonderfully readable compilation of
distinguished biographies. . . Miller documents the shifts that
emptied Main Street throughout the Midwest, . . . [with] the
stories of men whose childhoods were spent in the small towns all
of them left behind, but some of them never left spiritually.
Miller's Small-Town Dreams is a museum of big men from small
towns."--Books and Culture
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