While the borders of the region may seem a bit fuzzy, Ms. Hoganson delineates the myth of the heartland ... But, as with many of our most cherished fables, the real story is more complex, and Ms. Hoganson lays it out in fascinating and convincing detail ... Ms. Hoganson’s book will surely appeal to her fellow scholars. For one thing, she stitches together insights from a slew of fields that are rarely in dialogue, including environmental and settler colonial history, as well as the study of borderlands and U.S. foreign policy, the last of which is her particular area of expertise, established by two previous books on the global roots of American consumerism and the Spanish-American War. For another, more than merely recovering the connections that have always bound the heartland to the rest of the world, Ms. Hoganson demonstrates that these linkages—seen and unseen—were essential to the growth of an incipient American empire. Lay people, by contrast, may be put off by the sprinkling of academic jargon or the digressions into works by other, less accessible historians. And while Ms. Hoganson is a marvelous writer, all but the most enthusiastic readers will skim impatiently over detailed passages about seeds, plants and weather, however important they are to her story. None of this is to detract from Ms. Hoganson’s considerable achievement.

In the end, Hoganson is not overturning the heartland myth to demonstrate that Midwesterners are cultivated citizens of the world, but rather to prove that they are, and always have been, 'agents of empire' ... One cannot help feeling, when reading it, that it is designed to implicate the region, historically, in the dirty work of globalization at a moment when many of its residents are conflicted about the costs and benefits of such arrangements. This argument becomes most explicit, and somewhat precarious, in the conclusion, when Hoganson insists that the heartland myth continues to shape political thought today ... It’s unclear whether a national readership has any interest in this reality, or whether its constituents are content to beat straw men to death. The heartland myth is often portrayed as a nostalgic fantasy of the right, but it is equally sustained by a more liberal, urbane sector of the country that seems to derive an almost erotic pleasure in revisiting it, again and again, only to see it ritually falsified. Hoganson’s purpose is to undermine the myth from within, and yet like all such revisions, even the most progressive and well-meaning, it leaves intact the most pernicious core of the fiction: that the Midwest is synonymous with small-town America, and that by peering into any one of these hamlets one can glimpse the soul of the nation.

The Heartland is a deeply-researched and engaging history of what a place formerly was in a corrective's clothing. One of the many great choices Hoganson made was including archival clippings from newspapers in between chapters. These are tangentially related to the subjects that surround their placement and they range from whimsical to serious ... Alongside these small glimpses into what an Urbana resident might have been reading on a day-to-day basis is Hoganson's writing style itself. She's clear and entertaining ... Those who come to The Heartland seeking an answer for how to understand the Midwest and its immediate political future will not find it. They will find, instead, a much richer, deeply researched book that will remain useful and readable long after the election cycle during which it's being published.

... confronts persistent views of the insular and benign Midwest and reinterpreting the heart of the American nation. Yet Hoganson’s book shows that local, national and global histories are more malleable and permeable than hard-and-fast categorizing allows, and that identity-based history does not necessarily undermine the national story. Rather, it keeps our history honest, free of simple nostalgias ... If [Hoganson] had continued her history of the Midwest past the early 20th century, she could have told the ongoing stories of dispossession and displacement for multiple peoples, classes and races.

Assumptions about space and place-making, Hoganson argues, continue to undergird the heartland myth. Indeed, the true strength of The Heartland lies in the first and last chapters, where Hoganson develops these claims through the lens of Kickapoo history ... The Heartland is a book that responds to the current political moment in two ways. In addition to addressing why history matters now for debunking myths that were born of, and continue to support, racism, The Heartland is also a book for a broad readership that makes transparent the methods of the historian ... Unfortunately, little of Hoganson’s expertise on gender and sexuality, which she has mobilized in her other scholarship, is on display in the book ... Hoganson makes clear that the heartland myth is premised on incomplete references to flawed histories. In so doing, Hoganson has set the stage for others to evaluate the ways in which the heartland myth has shaped the culture we live in today.

The Heartland is awash in interesting and fresh information. Hoganson’s thesis, however, is not entirely persuasive. Readers sympathetic to conventional wisdom about the Midwest may see little in the book to convince them that the region is not more insulated and isolated, stable and inward-looking than other places in the United States. Nor does Hoganson make a compelling case that her accounts of searches for products and markets, weather forecasting and birds provide bricks in the edifice of American imperialism. That said, Hoganson is surely right that some aspects of the heartland myth are better left behind.

In this sophisticated, complex work, history professor Hoganson ... dismantles the myth of the isolationist heartland with an analysis of Champaign’s involvement with organizations such as the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the International Institute of Agriculture. And she flips the 'flyover country' cliché, looking at how Champaign citizens are connected to the rest of the world by telegraph wires, the weather, migratory birds, and military planes. The final chapter follows the Kickapoo people’s experiences into the 20th century, demonstrating that, contrary to myth, nothing about the heartland’s geography makes it a safe place. Deeply researched with a well-proven argument, Hoganson’s book will attract many scholars as well as general readers who like innovative, challenging history.

A revelatory examination of America’s 'symbolic center in national mythologies' ... The result is this brilliantly reasoned, meticulously researched book, which refreshingly pushes against stereotypes at every turn ... With lively prose, Hoganson delivers an eye-opening, outside-the-box book that is mind-bending in all the right ways.