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...
The Rabbit Hutch: A Novel By Tess Gunty. Knopf, 2022. Hardcover, 352 pages, $28. Reviewed by Jeffrey Wald. Although I dislike identity politics, I must admit that when it comes to literature, I love to camp with my own tribe. In other words, I have a particular...
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...
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,...
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...
Our critic’s pick: “How Do You Do It? The Selected Works of Gerald Russello,” edited by David G. Bonagura Jr. (Cluny Media). @ClunyMedia @DavidGBonaguraJ