The Annals of Iowa

Review of: Nikita Khrushchev’s Journey into America, by Lawrence J. Nelson and Matthew G. Shoenbachler

Frese, Stephen J.

Nikita Khrushchev's Journey into America

Review of: America Ascendant: The Rise of American Exceptionalism, Dennis M. Sprag

Letsos, Niko

America Ascendant: The Rise of American Exceptionalism

Review of: Theodore Roosevelt, Naturalist in the Arena, by Char Miller and Clay S. Jenkinso

Wynn, Gregory

Theodore Roosevelt, Naturalist in the Arena

Review of: Living by Inches: The Smells, Sounds, Tastes, and Feeling of Captivity in Civil War Prisons, by Evan Kutzler

Bass, Patrick G.

298      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
who made Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin their home. Did Germans 
in Iowa not as eagerly participate in the discourse over slavery as their 
neighbors in Missouri? Did they not as willingly fight for the Union be-
cause they did not live in close proximity to the South? Did Germans in 
Iowa experience ethnic unity as Radical Republicans during the Civil 
War? Did they too revert to various interest groups at the end of Recon-
struction? Historians should conduct such an important comparative 
study and find answers to these questions because discovery of differ-
ences in ideology would not only underline Garrison’s argument but 
also substantiate the argument that German Americans were more di-
vided than united as an ethnic group despite American perceptions to 
the opposite.  
 
 
Living by Inches: The Smells, Sounds, Tastes, and Feeling of Captivity in Civil 
War Prisons, by Evan Kutzler. Civil War America Series. Chapel Hill, 
NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. xii, 195 pp. Illustrations, 
notes, bibliography, index. $29.95 paperback. 
Reviewer Patrick G. Bass is professor of history at Morningside College in 
Iowa. He specializes in European involvement with the U.S. Civil War. 
Author Evan Kutzler has performed exhaustive research to put together 
his contribution to the relatively new field of the history of senses in his 
Living by Inches: The Smells, Sounds, Tastes, and Feeling of Captivity in Civil 
War Prisons. The book is, in fact, organized by these senses, as the author 
systematically pursues and then recounts prisoner perceptions of sight, 
smell, touch, hearing, and taste, in that order, during their captivity. In-
deed, he pursues even greater specificity, as each chapter emphasizes 
but one or two aspects of the sense involved. For example, both sight 
and smell are explored by the limits of those senses (sight at night, and 
as anosmia takes over); then Kutzler explains touch through the ubiq-
uity of lice, and the prisoners’ battle against the pests, and hearing 
through both noise and silence (even noting the impacts of the absence 
of some sounds, such as church bells). The chapter on taste focuses on 
food as a key prisoner preoccupation and the search for wholesome food 
as key to survival—efforts, usually in vain, to avoid the scourges of pris-
ons, diarrhea and dysentery. 
This work is another addition to the recent renaissance in studies of 
Civil War prisons and prisoners of war. Unlike other works in this field, 
however, Kutzler’s aim is to organize and record the subjective responses 
of both Union and Confederate prisoners of war to their sensory environ-
ment. His aim focuses on the subjective past as noted by individuals, 
Book Reviews and Notices      299 
rather than on objective recreations of that past. For Kutzler, sources 
written long after the Civil War by former prisoners are just as valuable 
in exploring the perceptions of participants as are sources written dur-
ing the war, even contemporary with the experiences described. Thus, 
in the end, the work is more concerned with sensory ideation than with 
actual conditions. So, readers looking for systematic generalized accounts 
of prison conditions may be disappointed by his post-structuralist ap-
proach. Yet, he asserts that the ideations that are his focus gave prisoners 
a way to live in prison successfully—and the question he poses is not 
how so many prisoners died, but how so many prisoners lived through 
their ordeals. 
The work’s epilogue explores memory study—his own included, 
particularly concerning the influences of his extended research stay at 
Andersonville—and how prisoners continued to process their own in-
dividual experiences for years after 1865. This epilogue is valuable to 
the reader, as it clarifies the author’s more elusive goals in the earlier 
chapters. Thus, his prior use of pre-war works on etiquette, gender 
norms, and cleanliness, and their shaping of prisoner norms and expec-
tations—and consequently, emotional impacts of prison adjustments—
comes into clearer relief, as the epilogue recounts the prior norms of his 
own case and the extensive life-changing effects of his research.  
Some of the book’s more memorable elements record how prison-
ers sought to assert their own independence (indeed, individuality) and 
their defiance of the enemy by maintaining private sanitation standards 
(as best as possible, anyway) and by singing songs to annoy the guards. 
Varied (and sometimes amusing) prisoner competitions are also im-
portant aspects of the perceptions of the inmates, according to Kutzler. 
Parts of the work, however, are not for the faint of heart, involving the 
problems of living with revolting vermin and latrines. This reviewer 
notes that if Kutzler had infused his work throughout with the memory 
analysis of the epilogue, readers could more easily follow his approach, 
avoiding the confusion elicited by his challenging intra-chapter organi-
zational scheme. And, almost always, the reader is left wanting more 
information. Additionally, this reviewer wishes that the chapters had 
been focused less on one or two aspects of the sense subject, and instead 
had included more about other facets of the sense in question. This 
would have made for a longer work, but perhaps an ultimately more 
rewarding book.  
The bulk of Kutzler’s research focuses on eastern prisons and their 
prisoners. There is little here for those particularly fascinated by midwest-
ern or Iowa history. As part of a broader series on Civil War America put 
out by UNC Press, this work undoubtedly plays an irreplaceable role. 
300      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
Empathetic readers will find reading this work rough sledding, how-
ever; disgust may overwhelm them. Unfortunately, given Kutzler’s 
depth of research, outside of Civil War scholars or members of the guild 
pursuing history of the senses, there may not be a strong general market 
for Living by Inches: The Smells, Sounds, Tastes, and Feeling of Captivity in 
Civil War Prisons.  
 
 
Such Anxious Hours: Wisconsin Women’s Voices from the Civil War, edited 
by Jo Ann Daly Carr. Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography. Madison: 
University of Wisconsin Press, 2019. xiv, 347 pp. Map, illustrations, 
notes, bibliography, index. $34.95 hardcover.  
Reviewer Ginette Aley is visiting assistant professor of history at Kansas 
State University and associate editor of Kansas History: A Journal of the Cen-
tral Plains. She co-edited Union Heartland: The Midwestern Home Front dur-
ing the Civil War, published by Southern Illinois University Press in 2013. 
“I have no husband now,” a despondent young wife, Belle Arnold 
Sleeper of rural Berlin, Wisconsin, wrote to her brother in April 1865. 
She continued: “I thought I was prepared for this news but the blow has 
nearly crushed me,” (288) and she saw nothing but darkness ahead. Her 
letter exposes the depth of anguish upon learning of her soldier hus-
band’s death, especially his suffering as a prisoner of war at Libby 
Prison. It also illustrates how intimately familiar Wisconsin and mid-
western women were with the Civil War. 
Arnold is one of eight Wisconsin women, ranging in ages from 
eighteen to forty-three-years old and hailing from six different locales, 
whose personal writings were collected from several repositories and 
edited by librarian Jo Ann Daly Carr in Such Anxious Hours: Wisconsin 
Women’s Voices from the Civil War. Along with their age range, their per-
spectives are varied. Some resided in cities and villages, and others 
lived on farms. They were variously employed in school teaching, sew-
ing, farming, typesetting, and one as an aspiring artist. With a goal of 
using these writings to create a kind of straight-line narrative of women 
on the Wisconsin home front, Carr has chosen to organize them into 
chronological chapters rather than analyze them topically, which in ef-
fect limits a deeper understanding of commonalities and differences 
among them and among midwestern women (one must make constant 
use of the index to get at this kind of information). This is also hindered 
by, more problematically, Carr’s failure to identify fully and engage the 
burgeoning regional historiography of midwestern women on the 


English

Living by Inches: The Smells, Sounds, Tastes, and Feeling of Captivity in Civil War Prisons

Review of: The Mormon Handcart Migration: “Tounge nor pen can never tell the sorrow,” by Candy Moulton

Orton, Chad M.

294      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
is of particular relevance to The Annals of Iowa—receive comparatively 
less attention. Readers who seek a more comprehensive biography with 
archival citations should consult John G. Turner’s Brigham Young: Pio-
neer Prophet (2012). 
Despite its admitted limitations, Alexander’s is a synthesis of peri-
odically stunning depth and insight. The author’s deep familiarity with 
his subject matter is plainly evident. The book’s secondary title—the Ex-
pansion of the Mormon Faith—may suggest the author focuses narrowly 
on religious matters, but such is not the case. Young made little distinc-
tion between “religious” and “secular” matters, and Alexander follows 
his lead, ranging widely from “secular” topics like environmental land 
use to straightforward “religious” matters such as missions and temples. 
Packed with surprisingly immersive dives on scattered topics, Alexan-
der’s synthesis thereby differs from an older reliable synthesis, Newell 
G. Bringhurst’s Brigham Young and the Expanding American Frontier 
(1986), a slimmer work of greater balance but less depth. 
A seasoned scholar’s reflections on a critical figure in western his-
tory, Brigham Young and the Expansion of the Mormon Faith is a synthesis 
worth reading. 
 
 
The Mormon Handcart Migration: “Tounge nor pen can never tell the sorrow,” 
by Candy Moulton. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019. 
xv, 272 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, appendix, index. 
$29.95 hardcover. 
Reviewer Chad M. Orton is a Historic Sites Curator with the Church His-
tory Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He is 
an expert on the nineteenth-century migration of Latter-day Saints and 
their arrival in Utah. 
A unique and compelling story of overland migration took place be-
tween 1856–60, when nearly 3,000 members of The Church of Jesus 
Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) “gathered to Zion” (Utah) by 
handcart. While numerous articles and books have looked at various 
aspects of this experience, Candy Moulton’s Mormon Handcart Migration 
is the first one-volume history in nearly 60 years. 
The “gathering” largely took place under the direction of church 
leaders, and these handcart pioneers were a small percentage of the 
nearly 70,000 Latter-day Saints who traveled emigrant trails between 
1846 and 1868. Many who “gathered” were only able to make the jour-
ney because of loans from the church-established Perpetual Emigrating 
Fund (PEF). In 1855, the PEF was nearly broke and Brigham Young, 
Book Reviews and Notices      295 
looking for a way that would still allow individuals dependent upon 
the fund to emigrate, turned to handcarts, because they cost a fraction 
of what it took to travel by wagon. While others had used similar means 
to travel across the country, the experience of Latter-day Saints stands 
out because of its organization and scope. 
This book looks at each of the ten handcart companies. The first 
seven began their journey in Iowa City and traveled about 1,300 miles. 
The last three started in eastern Nebraska, which meant these compa-
nies not only had 300 fewer miles to push and pull their handcarts, but 
they also avoided the infamously deep sands of Iowa that presented a 
challenge for both wagon and handcart emigrants alike.  
Moulton presents the challenges leaders faced in implementing this 
new method of travel, including recounting the concerns, confusion and 
conflicting opinions of those responsible for its implementation. She 
also examines how enthusiasm on the part of some of those charged 
with implementing the program and ignorance on the part of those 
traveling by handcart allowed zealousness to overcome reason during 
the first year. Since most handcart pioneers came from Europe, 
Moulton’s look at migrants’ experiences during their ocean voyages as 
well as their overland journeys by rail and steamboat prior to beginning 
the handcart leg of their travels is a particularly interesting aspect of the 
volume.  
She discusses the first three companies of 1856 together in one chap-
ter, interweaving the writings of company members. Much of the focus 
upon the handcarts has long been on the fourth and fifth companies, 
the Willie and Martin companies, which were trapped by early winter 
storms in present-day Wyoming and experienced a great loss of life. A 
major portion of Moulton’s work is likewise devoted to these compa-
nies—and the Hunt and Hodgetts wagon companies that followed 
them and were also caught in the storms—and the subsequent rescue 
that involved hundreds and lasted more than two months. Moulton de-
votes chapters to the two 1857 companies, who were aided in their jour-
ney by U.S. troops bound for Utah during the so-called “Utah War,” a 
chapter to the company that traveled in 1859, and a chapter to the two 
1860 companies, the last handcart companies.  
Handcart companies occasionally faced similar challenges, one be-
ing that there were times when they had inadequate food, yet by look-
ing at the handcart experience in its entirety, Moulton shows that the 
experiences of the companies varied. For instance, the makeup of the 
companies traveling after 1856 differed from the first companies as em-
igrants learned lessons and addressed problems. As a result, death rates 
for later companies were comparable to wagon companies. 
296      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
Moulton approaches the subject in a fast-paced and engaging style 
that she honed through years of newspaper reporting. Her interest in 
the handcarts grew in part out of her husband having handcart pioneer 
ancestors and from her own long-standing interest in overland emigra-
tion. The book is at its best when she draws upon her strengths, includ-
ing her own expertise regarding the trail and trail narratives, and allows 
individuals to speak for themselves and tell their own stories. In allow-
ing these voices to be heard, Moulton presents themes long associated 
with the handcart story—faith, devotion, sacrifice, heartache, tragedy 
and triumph. These themes are at the heart of why thousands of Latter-
day Saints each year push and pull handcarts in multi-day reenact-
ments known as the “trek.” 
 
 
German Americans on the Middle Border: From Antislavery to Reconciliation, 
1830–1877, by Zachary Stuart Garrison. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illi-
nois University Press, 2020. xiii, 232 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. 
$30.00 paperback.  
Reviewer Petra DeWitt is an assistant professor of history at the Missouri 
University of Science and Technology. She is the author of Degrees of Alle-
giance: Harassment and Loyalty in Missouri's German-American Community 
during World War I (2012). 
German Americans on the Middle Border takes a geographic approach to 
evaluate the place of German immigrants during the American Civil 
War and Reconstruction. Zachary Stuart Garrison focuses primarily on 
German immigrants who settled on what he calls the Middle Border, 
the area along the Ohio River, from its confluence with the Mississippi 
River northward to the Mississippi’s confluence with the Missouri River. 
This natural line in the midwestern landscape divided freedom from 
slavery and represented the intersection of northern, southern, and 
western political ideologies.  
Taking this spatial view allows Garrison to update the traditional 
historiography of German immigrants’ inherent opposition to slavery 
due to their beliefs in civil liberties and their European experiences. The 
author sees a more complex picture and convincingly argues that not 
all German Americans held abolitionist views. Instead, the passage of 
the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 and its threat to the survival of the 
United States inspired German immigrants to overcome their own ide-
ological differences and briefly unite in opposition to slavery as an in-
stitution that not only limited individual freedoms but also restricted 
the advancement of society as a whole. When the Civil War broke out, 


The Mormon Handcart Migration: "Tounge nor pen can never tell the sorrow,"

Review of: Petroglyphs of the Kansas Smoky Hills, by Rex C. Buchanan, Burke W. Griggs, and Joshua L. Svaty

Benn, David W.

Book Reviews and Notices      189 
 After reading this scattershot assault on regional parochialism, one 
emerges from the text with a different line of questioning, though: What 
is truly local? If nearly everything can be traced back to extra-regional 
origins, what makes any particular place distinct? And what makes the 
foreign uniquely foreign, and not the byproduct of some other migration 
or connection? Are all places therefore a matter of historical definition? 
These questions fall beyond the scope of this book, but Hoganson’s re-
situating of the Midwest—away from the musty pages of prairie yore 
and toward a dynamic region with a complex past—has the potential 
to guide the way to a new synthesis. The myth may yet survive, but it 
is staggering. 
 
 
Petroglyphs of the Kansas Smoky Hills, by Rex C. Buchanan, Burke W. 
Griggs, and Joshua L. Svaty. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2019. 
x, 209 pp. Map, color illustrations, glossary, references, index. $29.95 
hardcover. 
Reviewer David W. Benn is an archeologist affiliated with Bear Creek Ar-
cheology, Inc., who lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee. 
Petroglyphs of the Kansas Smoky Hills is a photographic record of 12 pre-
historic rock art sites and one intaglio site in the Smoky Hills region of 
central Kansas. The authors—a geologist, a lawyer, and a local resident—
must have expended considerable energy and resources to publish this 
beautiful volume in large format (11” x 11” ) with the goal of preserving 
a detailed record of relatively obscure rock art sites. They did not at-
tempt to document all of the rock art sites even in the Smoky Hills re-
gion, although that region seems to contain large amounts of rock art. 
The authors do not provide site locations, because nearly all of the sites 
are situated on private property where concerns about trespassing and 
vandalism are paramount.  
 The book’s first chapter offers an overview of the sites, including 
their histories of discovery and background about prehistoric tribes 
who occupied the region. The concluding chapter (“Challenges”) pre-
dicts that weathering will gradually but inevitably dissolve the soft 
sandstone and its rock art images. Between these two chapters are 13 
chapters with basic descriptions of each rock art site (and the “serpent” 
intaglio) with headings like “Horses and People,” “Anthropomorphs,” 
“Bluff above the Smoky Hill River,” “Bison and People,” “Shield at 
Spring,” “Birds, Lines on Bluff,” etc. The descriptive and, at times, lyrical 
text in each chapter is formed around one or more spectacular color 
photographs of site context and the most visible petroglyph images 
achieved under natural lighting. Close-up photos display petroglyph 
190      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
figures or images that captured the authors’ attention. The authors give 
the rock art images descriptive names, but they do not go beyond de-
scription into serious anthropological analysis, extensive typologies, or 
a thorough study of the rock walls under different lighting conditions. 
They compare a few of the sites with nineteenth-century drawings of 
similar rock art figures or early twentieth-century photographs of the 
same sites to demonstrate how time is destroying these cultural re-
sources. The authors did not intend to do any in-depth analysis of the 
images or their potential ages.  
 My initial impression of this volume was that it looks like a coffee- 
table book with about 100 stunning color images of sandstone outcrops, 
spirit-beings, and Europeans (soldiers) as well as some creative (and 
much more not-so-creative) graffiti. I did recognize familiar petroglyph 
figures seen elsewhere, and the authors also draw some parallels with 
similar images at other sites. Scholars may not use all of these pictures 
for analysis or to draw comparisons with other carefully studied rock 
art sites, such as many recorded rock art images in northeastern Iowa. 
(See Lori A. Stanley “A Century of Iowa Rock Art Research,” Journal of 
the Iowa Archeological Society 49 [2002], 65–85.) However, after consider-
ing the volume more closely, I came to appreciate that these magnificent 
photographs will stand the test of time as thorough, reliable historical 
records of prehistoric sites that will inevitably erode into dust. 
 
 
Authorized Agents: Publication and Diplomacy in the Era of Indian Removal, 
by Frank Kelderman. Native Traces Series. Albany: State University of 
New York Press, 2019. xi, 274 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. $95 hardcover. 
Reviewer John P. Bowes is professor of history at Eastern Kentucky Uni-
versity. He is the author of Land Too Good for Indians: Northern Indian Re-
moval (2016). 
The diplomatic record of the nineteenth-century United States is replete 
with Native American voices. The nature of federal Indian policy and 
the drive to expand the American empire from the late 1700s forward 
meant that indigenous leaders frequently sat down and negotiated with 
American officials over land, annuities, and policies. As with any pri-
mary source material, however, the central question is how these rec-
ords can and should be used. To what extent can treaty council journals, 
memorials, and more public literature prove representative of Native 
positions and concerns? What power did those voices have to influence 
the encounters between Native leaders and federal officials? 
 In Authorized Agents, Frank Kelderman addresses those questions 
and more through an introduction and four case-study chapters. At the 


Petroglyphs of the Kansas Smoky Hills

Lindell, Lisa R.

So Well Begun and So Much Needed: Building up Libraries for Residents of Iowa's State Institutions

Review of: The Heartland: An American History, by Kristin L. Hoganson

Offenburger, Andrew

187 
Book Reviews and Notices 
The Heartland: An American History, by Kristin L. Hoganson. New York: 
Penguin Press, 2019. xxvi, 399 pp. Maps, illustrations, notes, index. $30 
hardcover. 
Reviewer Andrew Offenburger is assistant professor of history at Miami 
University. He is the author of Frontiers in the Gilded Age: Adventure, Capi-
talism, and Dispossession from Southern Africa to the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands, 
1880–1917 (2019). 
In The Heartland, Kristin Hoganson is a historian on the hunt, out to dis-
pel a myth in American popular culture: that the Midwest forms the 
heart of the country and is an isolated, parochial place. Wielding a six-
chapter study like a historiographical shotgun, Hoganson loads each 
chapter with a broad array of historical evidence, calling attention to the 
region’s global connections, using her resident county of Champaign, 
Illinois, as a focal point. With overwhelming evidence to connect the 
local to the global, the author then fires a sustained attack on myth and 
memory, effectively arguing for a new way of understanding the Mid-
west. Some of her shots hit, some miss, but the end result is a serious 
blow to midwestern isolationism. 
 Where others see white picket fences and a purely American home-
land, Hoganson finds deep global roots and common imperial ambi-
tions. “What is the nation at heart when we unbind it from myth?” she 
asks as a guiding question (xxv). Her response to this—less an answer 
to “what is” than a deconstruction of “what isn’t”—constitutes a series 
of in-depth case studies meant to foreground the region’s global ties. In 
chapter one, probably the most effective and persuasive contribution, 
she shows how settler pressures on indigenous lands led to the dispos-
session of the Kickapoo, among other indigenous peoples, and to Euro-
Americans’ reclaiming the region as one of permanent heritage. From 
this milieu emerged the local historical texts bound in gilded covers that 
functioned as mechanisms to establish legitimacy, normalcy, conserva-
tism, and heritage for a Turnerian readership. Chapter two explores the 
northern and southern connections of the developing cattle industry in 
the nineteenth century, which readers will recognize as the author’s ac-
claimed “Meat in the Middle” article in the Journal of American History. 
Chapter three details the cross-breeding of hogs in England and the 
overlapping eugenic and social Darwinist beliefs that tied Americans to 
their former mother country. Chapter four explores the anti-isolationism 
of alliance politics during the late nineteenth century. 
188      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
 The final two chapters deserve special consideration (below), but, 
as the previous chapter summaries may indicate, the book focuses, con-
sistently and insistently, on the strength of local and global ties. This 
produces an unwieldy analysis at times, exemplified by a summary 
paragraph from the introduction. There the author describes her search, 
which led her to “Anglo-Saxonist pigs, Chinese miracle plants, celebrity 
bulls, polar explorers, African winds, World War I aces, racialized bees, 
Cuban radio chatter, and UFOs. One thread led to an 1873 cavalry 
invasion of Mexico; another to diarrhea-induced scandals on British 
ships. Still other threads connected Champaign to consular outposts 
in Germany, bioprospectors in Manchuria, congresses of the Inter-
Parliamentary Union, and a fledgling agricultural college in Piracicaba, 
Brazil. I learned of reservations for westward-moving native tribes of 
birds, the politics of tornado mapping, an Algonquian people living 
under an international bridge, Malthusian fears of a global race war, a 
Hindu student’s arrival in a place he hadn’t known existed, and people 
on the ground wondering when the next bomb would fall. I found so 
many leads that I could not possibly follow them all” (xxv–xxvi). 
 Overwhelming, yes, and intentionally—effectively—so. One can-
not set the book down after six chapters of a global barrage against pro-
vincialism and come away with the same view of the Midwest. By this 
measure, the work is a considerable success and an important contribu-
tion to reformulating the American middle. The consequences of this 
strategy, however, lead to less persuasive sections, notably chapter five, 
which aims to contradict the trite characterization of the Midwest as 
“flyover country.” To do so, Hoganson turns to the skies to discuss tele-
communications (from the appearance of telegraph poles to wireless 
telegraphy), the politics of meteorology, hunting and birds, kite flying, 
ballooning, and militarized airspace. The chapter feels disjointed, 
quirky, and a step too far. 
 Whereas the author’s analytical framework might hamper some of 
the narrative, it often produces significant interventions. Chapter six 
follows the Kickapoo as they are removed from Illinois to Kansas, Indian 
Territory (Oklahoma), and Mexico, nearly all of which takes place beyond 
today’s understanding of the Midwest. For this reason, some readers 
may see this chapter as easily excluded from the study, but that would 
miss the author’s point. Dispossession and its consequences must be 
understood as midwestern phenomena. Chapter six is not an appendage 
about displaced Native Americans beyond the nation’s margins; rather, 
it is central to the story about the middle. If teaching The Heartland in 
undergraduate courses, professors might ask their students, “Was chap-
ter six necessary?” In arguing the negative, some students might come 
to realize that their own ideas about the region need updating. 
Book Reviews and Notices      189 
 After reading this scattershot assault on regional parochialism, one 
emerges from the text with a different line of questioning, though: What 
is truly local? If nearly everything can be traced back to extra-regional 
origins, what makes any particular place distinct? And what makes the 
foreign uniquely foreign, and not the byproduct of some other migration 
or connection? Are all places therefore a matter of historical definition? 
These questions fall beyond the scope of this book, but Hoganson’s re-
situating of the Midwest—away from the musty pages of prairie yore 
and toward a dynamic region with a complex past—has the potential 
to guide the way to a new synthesis. The myth may yet survive, but it 
is staggering. 
 
 
Petroglyphs of the Kansas Smoky Hills, by Rex C. Buchanan, Burke W. 
Griggs, and Joshua L. Svaty. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2019. 
x, 209 pp. Map, color illustrations, glossary, references, index. $29.95 
hardcover. 
Reviewer David W. Benn is an archeologist affiliated with Bear Creek Ar-
cheology, Inc., who lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee. 
Petroglyphs of the Kansas Smoky Hills is a photographic record of 12 pre-
historic rock art sites and one intaglio site in the Smoky Hills region of 
central Kansas. The authors—a geologist, a lawyer, and a local resident—
must have expended considerable energy and resources to publish this 
beautiful volume in large format (11” x 11” ) with the goal of preserving 
a detailed record of relatively obscure rock art sites. They did not at-
tempt to document all of the rock art sites even in the Smoky Hills re-
gion, although that region seems to contain large amounts of rock art. 
The authors do not provide site locations, because nearly all of the sites 
are situated on private property where concerns about trespassing and 
vandalism are paramount.  
 The book’s first chapter offers an overview of the sites, including 
their histories of discovery and background about prehistoric tribes 
who occupied the region. The concluding chapter (“Challenges”) pre-
dicts that weathering will gradually but inevitably dissolve the soft 
sandstone and its rock art images. Between these two chapters are 13 
chapters with basic descriptions of each rock art site (and the “serpent” 
intaglio) with headings like “Horses and People,” “Anthropomorphs,” 
“Bluff above the Smoky Hill River,” “Bison and People,” “Shield at 
Spring,” “Birds, Lines on Bluff,” etc. The descriptive and, at times, lyrical 
text in each chapter is formed around one or more spectacular color 
photographs of site context and the most visible petroglyph images 
achieved under natural lighting. Close-up photos display petroglyph 


The Heartland: An American History

Review of: Chemical Lands: Pesticides, Aerial Spraying, and Health in North America’s Grasslands Since 1945, by David D. Vail

Courtwright, Julie

108      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
CCC museum at Backbone State Park, which contains a small archive 
of primary source materials; (2) a 1990 survey of CCC work in Iowa’s 
state parks, which documented approximately 670 CCC-built structures 
and resulted in several historic district listings on the National Register 
of Historic Places; and (3) volunteers with the Iowa Department of 
Natural Resources, who, beginning in 2001, interviewed more than 125 
men who worked in the CCC, the transcripts of which are archived 
on the department’s website (www.iowadnr.gov/Places-to-Go/State-
Parks/The-CCC-Legacy).  
 
 
Chemical Lands: Pesticides, Aerial Spraying, and Health in North America’s 
Grasslands Since 1945, by David D. Vail. NeXus: New Histories of Sci-
ence, Technology, the Environment, Agriculture and Medicine. Tusca-
loosa: University of Alabama Press, 2018. xiv, 194 pp. Map, illustrations, 
notes, bibliography, index. $39.95 hardcover and ebook. 
Reviewer Julie Courtwright is associate professor of history at Iowa State 
University. She is the author of Prairie Fire: A Great Plains History (2011). 
David Vail’s Chemical Lands is an eye-opening treatment of the chal-
lenges of twentieth-century agriculture on the Great Plains. Coming out 
of World War II, farmers faced opportunities and trials associated with 
the intersection of agriculture, environment, and technology that were 
unique to the era. Pilots returning from war service could now adapt 
their airplanes, as well as their skills, to drop pesticides and herbicides 
onto fields from above, saving farmers the time, money, and aggrava-
tion associated with more traditional methods used to control the inva-
sive pests and weeds that continually threatened to overwhelm crops. 
Farmers could use airplanes for weed and pest control, but should they? 
Many Great Plains farmers were hesitant. That is one of the important 
issues Vail examines in Chemical Lands. 
 Vail’s work illuminates how much the publication of Rachel Car-
son’s Silent Spring in 1962 has shaped our thinking. Despite the positive 
impact of Carson’s work, she oversimplified the perilous status of aerial 
spraying in her book, painting a broad and, as Vail shows, at least par-
tially inaccurate picture of ignorant and irresponsible pilots armed with 
dangerous chemicals and no license to spray. The problem with Car- 
son’s perception of aerial spraying is that it lacked regional nuance. 
Chemical Lands, however, examines the practice from a regional point of 
view and demonstrates, through primary research, that farmers and 
pilots, as well as extension agents, university professors, aircraft manu-
facturers, and others, were, in fact, profoundly concerned about the 
moral and environmental implications of aerial spraying almost 20 
Book Reviews and Notices      109 
years before Silent Spring appeared. Great Plains agriculturalists made 
a serious study of the technology and skills needed to practice pest and 
weed control via airplane without allowing undesirable effects like 
“drift” to poison neighboring fields or populations, and they did it be-
fore the start of the environmental movement. 
 Vail’s nuanced description of the regional culture that surrounded 
aerial spraying is his most significant contribution. As he claims in his 
introduction, Chemical Lands adds to the scholarship by “shedding light 
on the Great Plains story” (5). Where Vail is less convincing is in his 
claims of Great Plains regional distinctiveness. Throughout the book he 
argues that agriculturalists of the plains reacted differently to aerial 
spraying technology than those in other regions of the country. The 
marketing strategies adopted by chemical companies like Dow and 
DuPont did not work as well on the plains as they did elsewhere, for 
example, because the companies did not appreciate the plains farmers’ 
dedication to safety (63–64). Okay. But why? While Vail admirably con-
tributes to the Great Plains agricultural story, he does not adequately 
explain why that story is distinctive from other regions. He does cite 
Great Plains environmental, climate, and agricultural variability as a 
potential answer to the “why question” (66) but does not go far enough 
with his explanation and its connection to aerial chemical spraying. 
 The difficulty of proving distinctiveness does not, however, detract 
from the importance of Chemical Lands. Vail’s work is a significant con- 
tribution to scholarship on the Great Plains and the American West and 
to environmental and agricultural history. It highlights local experiences 
and local thinking regarding a critical shift in agricultural technology and 
practice—a shift that had profound environmental implications. Vail 
demonstrates that many Great Plains farmers and aerialists were think-
ing about the long-term consequences of pesticide use even as the tech-
nology was still developing. That is not the impression readers received 
from Silent Spring but is revealed by Vail’s research. As the twentieth cen-
tury continued, the “pioneering efforts” of Great Plains agriculturalists to 
“manage the benefits and measure the risks” of aerial chemical spraying 
influenced areas beyond the region itself. Chemical Lands tells that story, 
and Great Plains history is now more enlightened as a result. 
 
 
Nikita Khrushchev’s Journey into America, by Lawrence J. Nelson and 
Matthew G. Shoenbachler. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. 2019. 
x, 283 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliographical essay on primary sources, 
index. $34.95 hardcover. 
Reviewer Stephen J. Frese is a high school science teacher at Marshalltown 
High School. Many years ago, his paper, “Comrade Khrushchev and Farmer 


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