Can the United States Have a Good History?

Can the United States Have a Good History?

The Good Country: A History of the American Midwest, 1800-1900 By Jon K. Lauck. University of Oklahoma Press, 2022. Paperback, 366 pages, $26.95. Reviewed by Daniel J. Fischer. Historians have a complicated job. Their ultimate aim should be to use the available...
Can Whimsy Save the Small-Town Novel?

Can Whimsy Save the Small-Town Novel?

Virgil Wander by Leif Enger. Grove Press, 2018. Paperback, 320 pages, $17. Reviewed by Matt Miller Small towns in American fiction have a history as varied as the landscapes they inhabit. Often stifling or enervating, as in the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sherwood...
What Lasch Knew

What Lasch Knew

The Topeka School: A Novel by Ben Lerner. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019. Hardcover, 304 pages, $27. Reviewed by Jon K. Lauck Ben Lerner has written an intense new novel that will mark our cultural moment for some time, even in these strange days, but in ways that,...
Making a Home Among Monsters and Martians

Making a Home Among Monsters and Martians

Midwestern Strange: Hunting Monsters, Martians, and the Weird in Flyover Country by B. J. Hollars. University of Nebraska Press, 2019. Paperback, 208 pages, $20. Reviewed by Jacob A. Bruggeman It was around the time of my ninth birthday that I realized the Loch...