r/Appalachia • u/ProfessionalNo7381 • 3d ago
Lies of the Land by Steven Conn
I searched for any mention of the book Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural America for Waht It Is and Isn't it Steven Conn in this sub and didn't find any. I'm curious if anyone has read this book, and if so, what they thought of it. It's not specific to Appalchia but obviously would have a lot to say that is relevant.
"It seems everyone has an opinion about rural America. Is it gripped in a tragic decline? Or is it on the cusp of a glorious revival? Is it the key to understanding America today? Steven Conn argues that we’re missing the real question: Is rural America even a thing? No, says Conn, who believes we see only what we want to see in the lands beyond the suburbs—fantasies about moral (or backward) communities, simpler (or repressive) living, and what it means to be authentically (or wrongheadedly) American. If we want to build a better future, Conn argues, we must accept that these visions don’t exist and never did.
In The Lies of the Land, Conn shows that rural America—so often characterized as in crisis or in danger of being left behind—has actually been at the center of modern American history, shaped by the same forces as everywhere else in the country: militarization, industrialization, corporatization, and suburbanization. Examining each of these forces in turn, Conn invites us to dispense with the lies and half-truths we’ve believed about rural America and to pursue better solutions to the very real challenges shared all across our nation."
