Global Heartland: Cultivating the American Century on the Midwestern Farm, by Peter Simons, a historian and Hamilton’s New York Six Consortium project manager, was recently published by the University of Minnesota Press.
According to the publisher, the book highlights “the critical role of midwestern farmers in the creation of the American Century,” and that Simons “explores how, after decades of slipping to the margins of an urbanizing economy, these farmers assumed renewed strategic and cultural importance as they produced essential sustenance for overseas troops and food rations for a domestic population.”
Noting Simons’ “focus on farmers and their work rather than the more common attention to food or agricultural commodities,” the publisher says “Global Heartland complicates and expands ideas of the farm industry’s role in American history.”
According to reviewer Kristin Hoganson, author of The Heartland: An American History, “Global Heartland reveals how rural Midwesterners came to see their farms as being at the heart of the world. Just as importantly, it shows how the humanitarian and cooperative impulses of agrarian internationalism contended with more nationalist leanings to determine the nature of that heart.”
Simons was recently a guest on Iowa Public Radio’s “Talk of Iowa” podcast where he discussed the book and the role of Midwest farmers in America’s rise to power following WWII.
Posted August 21, 2025
