Beyond the Frontier: An Interview with David Brown

IN HIS LATEST BOOK, BEYOND THE FRONTIER: THE Midwestern Voice in American Historical Writing (University of Chicago Press, 2009), David S. Brown makes the case for a distinctive midwestern historiographical voice, one that challenged both the historical narrative that privileged New England patricians and southern planters as well as the East Coast orientation of the history profession. Brown’s collective biography of such midwestern historical luminaries as Frederick Jackson Turner, Charles Beard, William Appleman Williams, and Christopher Lasch complements his acclaimed 2006 intellectual biography of Richard Hofstadter.

Senior editor Donald A. Yerxa interviewed Brown, a professor of history at Elizabethtown College, in early October 2009. We supplement the interview with Ian Tyrrell’s review of Beyond the Frontier and Paul Gottfried’s personal commentary on his colleague’s work.