This used to be America. This rural landscape I walk through, drive through, every day is what American dreamers used to look to as the source of our national ideals. Field workers and farmers were the backbone of our strength. “Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass […]
Yes, Sarah Smarsh was clearly making a shameless bid for a Top Ten spot on the Heartlands list with the title of her memoir: Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth. But the editorial staff here at Heartlands can’t be won over by gimmicks. It takes good writing to […]
We went to the polls. We voted for change or not. We resisted or didn’t. And in the end, we remain divided. One pundit I heard this morning said that the most profound and confounding divide in America is the rural-urban/suburban split. As a site begun after the 2016 elections and devoted to understanding the […]
In the last part of my interview with Princeton sociologist, Robert Wuthnow, we talked about rural churches. In this segment we pull back the lens and look at shame, among other things… You say in the book, The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America, that part of your effort is to explain to other […]
Robert Wuthnow is that rare academic who still keeps a foot in the heartlands. Wuthnow is a respected Professor of Social Sciences at Princeton University but he’s as apt to talk to you about his native Kansas as he is the cultural capitals of DC and New York. I caught up with Wuthnow a few […]
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