"The economic base" from The Urban Frontier / Richard C. Wade -- "It answers well for a village" from Sugar Creek / John Mack Faragher -- Selections form The Autobiography of Mark Twain / Mark Twain -- "A private lesson from a bulldog" from The Hoosier School-Master / Edward Eggleston -- "Railroad Towns" from Plains Country Towns / John C. Hudson -- "A 'Goof Fellow's' Wife" from Main-Travelled Roads / Hamlin Garland -- "Belonging to the Community" from Main Street on the Middle Border / Lewis E. Atherton -- "The Hired Girls: from My Ántonia / Willa Cather -- Selections form The Poetry of Vachel Lindsay / Vachel Lindsay -- "The Budding of Art" from The Age of Indiscretion / Clyde Brion Davis -- "Storm" from Not Without Laughter / Langston Hughes -- Excerpt from Main Street / Sinclair Lewis -- Selections from Spoon River Anthology / Edgar Lee Masters -- Excerpt from Poor White / Sherwood Anderson -- "The Resurrection" from Midland Magazine / Ruth Suckow -- Excerpt from A Peculiar Treasure / Edna Ferber -- "Inventions Re-making Leisure" from Middletown / Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd -- "Growing Up in Clear Lake," personal reminiscence / Alan R. Woolworth -- "Compromise and Its Limits" from Main Street in Crisis / Catherine McNicol Stock -- Poems from various collections / William Kloefkorn -- "The Last Picture Show" from Main Street Blues / Richard O. Davies -- "Nothing Happened" from Blooming / Susan Allent Toth -- Selections from Alliance, Illinois / Dave Etter -- "Quietly Thinking Over Things at Christmas" / from Letters from the Country / Carol Bly -- Selections from poems from the sangamon / John Knoepfle -- "If the Home Team Doesn't Win" from The Decline of Rural Minnesota / Joseph A. Amato and John W. Meyer -- "Sumus Quod Sumus" from Lake Wobegon Days / Garrison Keillor -- "Hardball" from Grass Fires / Dan Gerber -- "Two-speed" from Light in the Crossing / Kent Meyers -- "Decline and Denial" from Broken Heartland / Osha Gray Davidson -- "On the Cutting Edge : changes in Midwestern Meatpacking Communities" / Donald D. Stull -- "Village Character: The Pioneer Store" from Winter Book / Norbert Blei -- "A Broken Heartland" from U.S. News and World Report / Jeff Glasser -- "Business First and Always" from Rethinking Home / Joseph A. Amato.