The Lost Region: Toward a Revival of Midwestern History by Jon K. Lauck (review)

82 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY The Lost Region Toward a Revival of Midwestern History Jon K. Lauck In this compilation of four essays, variations of which appeared previously in Midwesternbased journals between 2010 and 2013, Jon K. Lauck makes an appeal for increased scholarly attention to what he calls “The Lost Region.” The defensive inflection captured in the title is consistent with Lauck’s view, threaded throughout the essays, that for several generations the Midwest has taken on the apparatus of an “exotic Other” (2). That is, in comparison to other regions, particularly the North, South, and increasingly tech-centric Pacific states, the country ’s interior is little more in the public imagination than fly-over territory dotted by the occasional rural meth lab. Today, the Midwest’s most famous city might well be Detroit, and not for reasons that many midwesterners would wish. In effect, Lauck is revisiting the frustrations expressed more than a century ago by the Middle West’s most famous historian, Frederick Jackson Turner. In “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893), Turner, annoyed at seeing the nation’s history books dominated by Puritans and planters, argued for the relevance of the Trans-Appalachian West as the critical frontier from which arose the peculiar character—independent, pragmatic, optimistic , and democratic—of the American people . Taking up Turner’s cross, Lauck notes both the declining academic interest in the history of the Middle West (fewer courses are taught on the region, and fewer journals and books address its story) and the reasons why. Notably, since the 1960s the interpretive turn towards narratives of race, class, gender, sexuality, and environmentalism have carried the historiographical high ground. Some important exceptions aside, state and regional histories rarely make for flashy dissertation or conference topics. Lauckisstrongestondetailingtheimportance of the Midwest in American history. As a trading and trapping area it helped spark the Seven Years War, it proved to be the core of Jefferson’s agrarian Book Reviews Jon K. Lauck. The Lost Region:Toward a Revival of Midwestern History. Iowa City, Ia: University of Iowa Press, 2013. 180 pp. ISBN: 9781609381899 (paper), $35.00. BOOK REVIEWS WINTER 2014 83 vision codified in the Louisiana Purchase, and it contributed greatly in terms of men, munitions, and foodstuffs to the country’s wars. Democratic activism flourished in the Populistic prairie states while the nation’s industrial rise rested in part on the immense growth of Chicago and the aforementioned Detroit. As compelling as this material is, however, it begs the point—does the Midwest still matter? Yes, the Northwest Ordinance established an eighteenth century template for free labor in the Great Lakes region, but how will that region aspire to greatness or, simply, a greater cultural relevancy in the twentyfirst century? Such answers are not—nor could they be— abundant in this book, though Lauck takes a stab in an instructional chapter, “Toward a Revival of Midwestern History.” His recommendations might raise eyebrows, for he argues that the nation’s colleges and universities can play a powerful role in said revival. That seems, in an academy currently and indeed long struggling to attract humanities majors, something of a dubious proposition. And how might the schools—or the states—coax their historians to offer more in the way of regional history? Lauck’s call for the application of “bureaucratic pressure” (73) raises even more eyebrows. Is the “revival” to be the child of functionaries? And what does it say about the “condition” of the Midwest if its importance must be force fed to undergraduates? This study offers a strong and altogether well-researched summary of the Middle West’s history and historiography; when tendering prescriptions it is thoughtful and pungent if less persuasive. David Brown Elizabethtown College The Red Atlantic American Indigenes and the Making of the Modern World, 1000-1927 Jace Weaver Approaching history from an Atlantic world framework is fraught with issues. Questions linger concerning the scope and periodization of Atlantic world studies, as well as the validity of the region itself. To these issues of definition, one might add that Atlantic world histories have traditionally centered on the exploits and experiences of white European cultural actors and the change left...