| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.3

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 249 words from this article are provided below; about 414 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the Organization of American Historians, 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 member of the Organization of American Historians, you can:: • Join the OAH and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the Journal of American History.
• 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 Journal of American History (86.1-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Journal of American History.
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 Journal of American History, 91.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Our Common Country: Family Farming, Culture, and Community in the Nineteenth-Century Midwest. By Susan Sessions Rugh. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001. xxiv, 285 pp. $45.00, ISBN 0-253-33910-3.)
For the last two decades, historians of the rural United States have engaged in a debate concerning the market behavior of farm families. Much of this debate focused on New England, the middle states, and the South. The discussion has now moved to the Midwest where Susan Sessions Rugh's Our Common Country uses a small Illinois community to explore the large social, economic, and political changes that were transforming the rural Midwest in the nineteenth century. Rugh has written an engaging and illuminating study that offers insights not only on the town she is examining but on the larger processes transforming that town and the nation.	1
Rugh's focus is the town of Fountain Green, founded in the early nineteenth century by a mix of New Englanders, southerners, and mid-Atlantic farmers. Rugh describes the rich cultural heritage each group brought and the ways it affected ideas of community, family, and farm organization. Rugh challenges those historians who view the history of the Midwest as simply a contest between New England Yankees and upland southerners. Rugh convincingly argues that migrants from the mid-Atlantic, though fewer in number, exerted great influence in the region. Indeed, these middle state settlers "were instrumental in the rapid expansion of agrarian capitalism and in brokering the conflicts" between Yankee and southerner (p. xx).	. . .

There are about 414 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.