| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 39.4

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the WHQ online. About 171 words from this article are provided below; about 371 words remain.

If you are a individual subscriber to the Western Historical Quarterly, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a subscriber to the Western Historical Quarterly, you can:: • subscribe here.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Western Historical Quarterly (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Western Historical Quarterly.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 39.4 | The History Cooperative

*Creating Minnesota: A History from the Inside Out.* By Annette Atkins. (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 2007. xvi + 319 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, index. $27.95.)
Too often narrow, hide-bound, and politically oriented, state histories are generally crammed chock full of easy assumptions and celebratory inclusions. Creating Minnesota instead settles into the more fruitful work of foregrounding the ways in which a historian might create a narrative about Minnesota as well as how a wide range of Minnesotans created the state's distinctive trajectory.	1
In so doing, the work offers a novel take on the genre. Avoiding an overarching structure, Creating Minnesota chronologically situates particular stories in context and uses those experiences to highlight broader trends at multiple scales—local, state, national, even international. It also draws on the insights of public historians and freely uses "objects and images" as "the central device for cracking open and looking into parts of the past" (p. xiii). The book even sports sidebar notes to engage the generalist.	. . .

There are about 371 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.