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| Book Review | Indiana Magazine of History, 101.4 | The History Cooperative
101.4  
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December, 2005
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Reviews

In the Middle of the Middle West
Literary Nonfiction from the Heartland

Edited by Becky Bradway
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003. Pp. xiii, 306. $55.00.)

Truth to tell, I have always found regional books to be an odd, if perfectly understandable, specialty of university presses. Universities exist in specific places (even those online have a locus) and should serve, as best they can, their communities. And while the publication of reference books for those interested in exploring facets of a particular part of the country cannot be impugned, the implicit boosterism that seems to define the genre has often struck me as the proof of just the opposite: region-esteem anxiety. This paradoxical tension between championing and defending a region is perhaps never more apparent than when literary writers join the fray. After all, the "literary" itself is a contested site for those seeking to achieve—or define—"success" within or outside the "East Coast establishment." . . .
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