"The Good Country" by Jon Lauck

So the Midwest is fly-over country, is it? Everything that’s worth anything is found on the U.S. coasts, is that what you think? Then you need to hear from Jon Lauck. His book, “The Good Country,” helps offset what some scholars’ have put out there. Lauck, who edits the Middle West Review and teaches history and political science at the University of South Dakota, serves up a more detailed picture of the American Midwest.  The American Midwest, by Lauck’s account, was the most democratically advanced place in the world during the 19th century. The region developed a rich civic culture that prized education, literature, libraries, and the arts; developed a stable social order grounded in Victorian norms, republican virtue, and Christian teachings; and generally put democratic ideals into practice to a greater extent than any nation to date. The outbreak of the Civil War and the fight against the slaveholding South only deepened the Midwest’s dedication to advancing a democratic culture and solidified its regional identity, the author noted. The “good country” was, of course, not the “perfect country,” and Lauck devotes a chapter to the question of race in the Midwest, finding early examples of overt racism but also discovering a steady march toward racial progress. He also finds many instances of modest reforms enacted through the democratic process and designed to address particular social problems, as well as significant advances for women, who were active in civic affairs and took advantage of the Midwest’s openness to women in higher education.Lauck told Steve Tarter that the decline that's hit the newspaper industry across the country has hit the Midwest hard. "The Chicago Tribune and St. Louis Post-Dispatch used to be major forces in American life but they've been cut back so much that they don't have the presence they used to have. We need to reverse that and give our region a stronger voice," he said.