When most people think of rural America, they often picture rolling farmlands as far as the horizon and the next-door neighbor being miles away.
There's an ideal, often perpetuated in the media and in our politics, that rural life is wholly distinct from urban life. It's “Green Acres.” It's rural versus urban.
But, a new book seeks to bust this myth of rural America and the perception that's been built through history.
"Lies of The Land: Seeing Rural America for What it is -- and isn't." is the latest book by Steven Conn. He is the W. E. Smith Professor of History at Miami University in Oxford. In the book, he writes, "when we talk about rural America, we find ourselves caught between the language of crisis and the language of myth."
Conn argues in the book that rural America has been at the center of the nation’s history and shaped by the same forces that shaped the rest of the country, including militarization and industrialization.
Guest:
-Steven Conn, W.E. Smith Professor of History, Miami University of Ohio