Midwest Futures [Paperback]

What does the future hold for the Midwest?

A vast stretch of fertile farmland bordering one of the largest concentrations of fresh water in the world, the Midwestern US seems ideally situated for the coming challenges of climate change. But it also sits at the epicenter of a massive economic collapse that many of its citizens are still struggling to overcome. The question of what the Midwest is (and what it will become) is nothing new. As Phil Christman writes in this idiosyncratic new book, ambiguity might be the region's defining characteristic. Taking a cue from Jeffersons grid, the famous rectangular survey of the Old Northwest Territory that turned everything from Ohio to Wisconsin into square-mile lots, Christman breaks his exploration of Midwestern identity, past and present, into 36 brief, interconnected essays. The result is a sometimes sardonic, often uproarious, and consistently thought-provoking look at a misunderstood place and the people who call it home.

A former substitute teacher, shelter worker, and home health aide,Phil Christmancurrently lectures in the English department at University of Michigan. His work has appeared inThe Hedgehog Review,Commonweal,The Christian Century,The Outline, and other places. He holds an MFA from the University of South Carolina-Columbia. He is the editor of theMichigan Review of Prisoner Creative Writing, a journal sponsored by the University of Michigan's Prison Creative Arts Project. He lives in Ann Arbor, MI.

A combination of history, memoir, reportage, and lit-crit that taught me a lot about a region Ive reported on....Check it out. James Fallows, The Atlantic

As the country stumbles through ever-growing crises, Christmans book taps into a broader conversation about the future of the countryof how its shaped and who is shaping itand in doing so, offers an extraordinarily insightful, potential plã