The poems in A Brief History of the Midwest trace the trajectory of the middle of America from its colonization to the present day. Its author was born and raised on Shadeland Farm in Urbana, Illinois where the Grace family has farmed for five generations and currently resides in rural central Ohio. The Midwest is often portrayed as one of two opposing cliches, namely as a cultural desert peppered with dilapidated factories and barns in which " average" Americans dwell, or oppositely as a pastoral retreat from urban coastal life where those who are weary of modernity can visit and find solace in the rolling cornfields tended by the salt of the earth who live simpler lives than those who live in America's major cities. Each of these cliches are obviously false, and contain various insulting assumptions. A Brief History of the Midwest is an attempt to capture the Midwest as it exists in reality, with all of its contradictions. This book is meant to be an antonym to the way the Midwest is described in Hillbilly Elegy. Central influences are Diane Seuss, Charles Wright, C.D. Wright, Jim Harrison and C.S. Giscombe.