Abstract "1940 is a thoroughly researched, sweeping history of the most important era of the twentieth century, seen through the lens of the rural Midwest. It is also the story of people caught up in the sweep of events at the intersection of the Great Depression and World War II, determined to sustain normal, everyday lives. Small-town and farm residents worked and studied, went to church and ballgames, danced and sang, traveled and raised their families. They also worried and grieved, survived on...

Abstract A near-contemporary of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Tilla Dahl Deen lived a life nearly as adventurous, too. During her 19th-century childhood in, first, rural Wisconsin and then rural Minnesota, she lived in a sod shanty and lived through two of the harshest winters the Midwest has ever seen. Along the way, she fended off a wolf, watched a summer sky turn dark with grasshoppers, saw death at first hand, and saw, first-hand, too, the transformation of a small prairie settlement into a thriving...