Description: Growing up, Rebecca Clarren only knew the major plot points of her tenacious immigrant family’s origins. Her great-great-grandparents, the Sinykins, and their six children fled antisemitism in Russia and arrived in the United States at the turn of the 20th century, ultimately settling on a 160-acre homestead in South Dakota. Over the next few […]

Excerpt: Celebration of the Ordinance—the original organic law of the states that would be carved out of the new nation’s northern borderlands—was overshadowed by simultaneous celebration of the drafting of the federal Constitution. Historically, local patriots took pride in the coincidence of national and regional beginnings. In the free land north and west of the […]

Excerpt: But let me first indicate that my discussion rests on the premise that, despitethe talk of the demons of the place and ghost of dead Indians, the book presentsa cogent historical narrative tracing the history of the United States since thecolonial days. For all its idiosyncratic language, Lawrence’s approach seemsessentially in line with that […]