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Searching for Silence in the Midwest

The southern Minnesota farmhouse, my childhood home, hides inelegantly behind a spotty row of evergreens. The trees stand bravely in the wind, the house’s only defense from winter’s bitter gusts....

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Why Dead Malls Comfort Me

I feel at home in dead malls. When I walk inside and absorb the silence, when I see the empty storefronts and walk past second-rate retailers that barely cling to life inside the twilight corridors,...

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I Was a Teenage Expat

England: the land of teatime, Harry Potter, and an archaic politeness more suited to novels than everyday life, all topped off with charming accents. My American family moved from the U.S. to the...

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Did the Midwest Win the Civil War?

Fort Sumter. Bull Run. Antietam. Vicksburg. Gettysburg. Appomattox Courthouse. These are the places you usually think of when you think about the Civil War. Not Milwaukee, Detroit, Indianapolis,...

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Wisconsin, Monster Capital of America?

The Pine Barrens of New Jersey may reverberate with the fetid screams of the cloven-hooved demon known as the Jersey Devil. The redwood forests of the Pacific Northwest may shake from the footfalls of...

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The Quirky Heartbeat of Middle America

In 2012, photographer Alec Soth decided he wanted to study the way that Americans gather. So, like a community newspaper photographer, he dropped in on Loyal Order of the Moose lodges, local dances,...

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How the Politics of Resentment Corrupted Wisconsin’s Culture of Nice

The April 5 presidential primaries in Wisconsin are expected to be close in both parties, and critical to deciding the Republican contest between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. And the winners will be...

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For Generations of Chicagoans, Marshall Field’s Meant Business—and Christmas

Christmas has not been celebrated at Chicago’s Marshall Field’s department stores since 2005, but mention the name to just about any Windy City native, and it will plunge them back into the childhood...

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How Norway Taught Me to Balance My Hyphenated-Americanness

During the year I spent studying at the university in Trondheim, Norway, I sometimes learned more about my own country than Norway. One day, in my immigration studies class, my professor David Mauk,...

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How Midwestern Suffragists Used Anti-Immigrant Fervor to Help Gain the Vote

In September 1914, the nationally renowned suffragist Anna Howard Shaw spoke to a large crowd at a Congregational Church in Yankton County, South Dakota. Shaw, a slight but charismatic 67-year-old, was...

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