Cayton and Onuf have tried to recapture a central place for region in our thinking while, at the same time, incorporating into their analysis the latest scholarship on gender, political behavior, etc. Theirs is a fine blending of the old and the new: old scholarship and new directions. -Malcolm J. Rohrbough

This is an ambitious work that … truly beongs on the ‘must do’ reading list of all midwestern and American historians. -American Historical Review

… an impressive interpretive work that will command the attention of regional historians and national scholars alike. -Illinois Historical Journal

… an excellent extended historiographic essay that seeks not only to locate the significance of the region created by the early land ordinance but also to raise issues for the historical examination of other regions of the country. -South Dakota History

What makes this book especially interesting and valuable is that it is informed by the post-modern scholar’s view that knowledge can never be objective and eternally true; rather, it is subjective and socially constructed, shaped by the political, social, intellectual, and economic environments in which it is formed. -Western Illinois Regional Studies

The book’s review of scholarship about the region is exhaustive, as well as brisk and lucid. -American Studies International

… a rigorous intellecutal analysis of the region’s most important historiography. -Gateway Heritage

… an excellent book …
-The Annals of Iowa

What is impressive about this densely written work is the number of secondary works incorporated into the text and the importance of the authors’ thesis of the considerable influence of happenings in the Midwest of the nineteenth century. -North Dakota History

There is … much to be praised in this book, and it will be frequently used and discussed by scholars of the early Midwest. -Journal of American History