"A reminder that even the smallest newspapers can hold the most powerful among us accountable."—The New York Times Book Review Iowa plays an outsize role in national politics. Iowa introduced Barack Obama and voted bigly for Donald Trump. But is it a bellwether for America, a harbinger of its future? Art Cullen’s answer is complicated and honest. In truth, Iowa is losing ground. The Trump trade wars are hammering farmers and manufacturers. Health insurance premiums and drug prices are soaring. That’s what Iowans are dealing with, and the problems they face are the problems of the heartland. In this candid and timely book, Art Cullen—the Storm Lake Times newspaperman who won a Pulitzer Prize for taking on big corporate agri-industry and its poisoning of local rivers—describes how the heartland has changed dramatically over his career. In a story where politics, agriculture, the environment, and immigration all converge, Cullen offers an unsentimental ode to rural America and to the resilient people of a vibrant community of fifteen thousand in Northwest Iowa, as much survivors as their town.
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“Author Art Cullen and narrator Chris Henry Coffey do the near impossible by making the audiobook listener care about the intimate details of life in an Iowa small town. With a delivery as folksy and homespun as the topic, Coffey recounts Cullen’s exhaustive history of Storm Lake and his own family and neighbors…The writing is crisp and economical, like a good small-town newspaper’s should be.”
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