The Sower and the Seer

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Perspectives on the Intellectual History of the American Midwest

By Jon K. Lauck, Paul Murphy, Andrew Seal, Gleaves Whitney, Joseph Hogan

The Midwestern landscape has given rise to significant visionaries whose extraordinary intellectualism has contributed to forming an American identity.

416 pages, 6 x 9
Paperback: $39.95 | ISBN: 978-0-87020-948-2
Ebook: $15.99 | ISBN: 978-0-87020-949-9
Publication Date: 3/23/2021

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Description

This collection of twenty-two essays, a product of revivals of interest in both Midwestern history and intellectual history, argues for the contributions of interior thinkers and ideas in forming an American identity. The Midwest has been characterized as a fertile seedbed for the germination of great thinkers, but a wasteland for their further growth. The Sower and the Seer reveals that representation to be false. In fact, the region has sustained many innovative minds and been the locus of extraordinary intellectualism. It has also been the site of shifting interpretations—to some a frontier, to others a colonized space, a breadbasket, a crossroads, a heartland. As agrarian reformer (and Michigander) Liberty Hyde Bailey expressed in his 1916 poem “Sower and Seer,” the Midwestern landscape has given rise to significant visionaries, just as their knowledge has nourished and shaped the region.

The essays gathered for this collection examine individual thinkers, writers, and leaders, as well as movements and ideas that shaped the Midwest, including rural school consolidation, women’s literary societies, Progressive-era urban planning, and Midwestern radical liberalism. While disparate in subject and style, these essays taken together establish the irrefutable significance of the intellectual history of the American Midwest.

Author Bios

Jon K. Lauck is a professor of history and political science at the University of South Dakota and the editor-inchief of the Middle West Review.

Joseph Hogan is the director of fact-checking at Retro Report.

Paul Murphy is a professor of history at Grand Valley State University.

Andrew Seal is a lecturer in the Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics at the University of New Hampshire.

Gleaves Whitney is the director of the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies at Grand Valley State University

In a raft of provocative and altogether absorbing portraits, this splendid collection illuminates the eclectic workings of the Midwestern mind. From literature to politics, race to religion, and more, these essays argue convincingly for the contributions of interior thinkers and ideas in forming a broader American identity. A stellar addition to the growing field of Middle Western studies, "The Sower and the Seer" makes for essential reading.

David S. Brown

Author of "Beyond the Frontier: The Midwestern Voice in American Historical Writing"

“It is sometimes assumed that Midwesterners lack an intellectual life. But the many kinds of thinking on display in this book, by both the subjects of the essays and their authors, remind us how untrue that assumption is, and how intellectual we have always been, especially when we forget that we’re not supposed to be.”

—Philip Christman, author of Midwest Futures