The Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural America for What It Isand Isnt

A "piercing, unsentimental" (New Yorker) history that boldly challenges the idea of a rural American crisis. It seems everyone has an opinion about rural America. Is it gripped in a tragic decline? Or is it on the cusp of a glorious revival? Is it the key to understanding America today? Steven Conn argues that were missing the real question: Is rural America even a thing? No, says Conn, who believes we see only what we want to see in the lands beyond the suburbsfantasies about moral (or backward) communities, simpler (or repressive) living, and what it means to be authentically (or wrongheadedly) American. If we want to build a better future, Conn argues, we must accept that these visions dont exist and never did. In The Lies of the Land, Conn shows that rural Americaso often characterized as in crisis or in danger of being left behindhas actually been at the center of modern American history, shaped by the same forces as everywhere else in the country: militarization, industrialization, corporatization, and suburbanization. Examining each of these forces in turn, Conn invites us to dispense with the lies and half-truths weve believed about rural America and to pursue better solutions to the very real challenges shared all across our nation.