When Kristin L. Hoganson arrived in Champaign, Illinois, the typical rural American 'heartland', she expected a place where the nation's identity exists in its pristine form. Struck by the gap between reputation and reality, she determined to get to the bottom of history and myth. The deeper she dug into the making of the modern heartland, the wider her story became as she realised that she'd uncovered an unheralded crossroads of people, commerce, and ideas. A provocative and highly original work of historical scholarship, to read The Heartland is to be inoculated against using the word 'heartland' unironically ever again.