Hollowing Out the Middle

October 4, 2009

CARR-HollowingOuttheMiddleHOLLOWING OUT THE MIDDLE:
The Rural Brain Drain and
What It Means for America
Patrick J. Carr and Maria J.  Kefalas
www.hollowingoutthemiddle.com

Beacon Press
Web: www.beacon.org
Blog: www.beaconbroadside.com
$26.95 Hardcover
ISBN:  978-0-8070-4171-0

“On a fundamental level, small towns can—if they question many of the taken-for-granted assumptions they have about who they should invest in and how—play a pivotal role in securing their own futures. We are convinced that holding on to old ways of life, ignoring the problem, or passively refusing to act are simply not options. Why let small-town America die when, with a plan and a vision, it could be reborn and once again vital?” — Authors Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas

“In HOLLOWING OUT THE MIDDLE the authors present a brave and daunting examination of why the most talented, the most productive young people leave our small towns and what can be done to stop this exodus. Those millions, like myself contributors to this Hollowing Out The Middle, who have flourished from the discipline, the warmth, the security, the high expectations and the life-experiences devoutly wish these same small town benefits for their children and grandchildren. This book is so generative, so fiercely compelling that I discovered that in my quiet moments, in my early morning wakeful periods, I became absorbed and engaged in the task of trying to solve the well-nigh unsolvable dilemmas presented here. I urge you to read this book.”
—Mildred Armstrong Kalish, author of Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression

“Wow!  A powerful book and a great addition to the Midwest Connections program.  It’s hard to find pertinent books for our non-fiction readers….and this is right at home.  It’s the story I see unfolding every day in Oskaloosa….” 
– Nancy Simpson, The Book Vault, Oskaloosa, IA

Be sure to buy this book from your favorite locally owned and operated Midwest independent bookseller!
Click here for the directory of our member bookstores.

Midwest Media – going on right now!

  • Wisconsin Public Radio/Kathleen Dunn Show; Tuesday, October 20
  • Midwest Opinions/KOGA; Monday, October 26
  • Voices of the Tri-States/KDTH Radio (Dubuque, Iowa); Wednesday, November 11
  • Des Moines Register; op-ed in early November
  • The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, Iowa); feature
  • Dakota Midday/South Dakota Public Radio; Monday, November 9; 1:00 – 1:25 EST (12:00 – 12:25 Central); live by phone
  • Conversations/WQUB (Quincy, Ill; Hannibal, MO; Keokuk, IA); Tuesday, November 10; 2:00 – 2:30pm EST  (1:00 – 1:30pm Central); taped by phone
  • Voices of the Tri-States/KDTH Radio (Dubuque, Iowa); Wednesday, November 11; 1:30 – 2:00pm EST (12:30 to 1:00 pm Central); live by phone with call-ins
  • Chicago Public Radio, Friday, November 20, live via remote

National Media attention to date:

  • Chronicle Review; cover article by authors on September 21
  • Readers Digest; October issue; mention in Big Idea section
  • Wall Street Journal; review assigned, to run week of 10/19
  • Newsweek.com Q&A interview with authors week of 10.19
  • On Point/WBUR (NPR National)
  • C-Span/Book TV filming event on Tuesday, October 27
  • This, That, and The Other/Gap Broadcasting (Great Falls, MT); Tuesday, November 10; 6:35 – 6:50pm EST (4:35 Mountain Time); live by phone;
  • Bob Edwards Show/XM Radio; in studio November 12
  • Leonard Lopate Show/WNYC (NPR New York);  Tuesday, November 24; 1:30 – 2:00pm; live in studio
  • Tavis Smiley Show/PRI, taped in early December
  • Radio Times/WHYY (NPR Philly); live in studio; early December

 MBA BOOKSELLER INFORMATION 

Booksellers — Earn up to $100 in rebates from MBA for promoting HOLLOWING OUT THE MIDDLE!
Midwest Connections rebate form for HOLLOWING OUT THE MIDDLE (PDF)

NEW!  Full-color sign/flyer (PDF) – Download, print and display this sign and/or make flyers from this PDF.

HOLLOWING OUT THE MIDDLE is available from Beacon Press, distributed by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, or from your preferred wholesaler.  Be sure to contact your HMH rep for more information about this title.

If you would like to inquire about setting up bookstore or reading group events or phoners with authors Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas, please contact publicist Pamela MacColl, 617-948-6582, pmaccoll@beacon.org. If you have sales or marketing questions, please contact Tom Hallock,  Tom Hallock, Associate Publisher, Director of Marketing, Sales and Subsidiary Rights,Beacon Press, 617-948-6571, THallock@beacon.org .

MBA and Beacon Press want your comments and reviews for this important study of our own small Midwest communities.  Please send them to us so we can share your endorsements with your fellow MBA booksellers and with your customers!

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 ABOUT THE BOOK

“The undoing of Middle America is the great secret tragedy of our times. For shining a bright, unwavering light on the unfolding disaster Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas deserve enormous credit; for proposing solutions that actually have a chance of succeeding, they deserve the gratitude of frustrated midwesterners everywhere.” 
—Thomas Frank, author of  What’s the Matter With Kansas? and The Wrecking Crew  

 “A solid and important work of first-rate ethnography. Hollowing Out the Middle is a rural panorama of heart-wrenching proportion.”  
—Stephen G. Bloom, author of Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America and The Oxford Project

“The book is compelling. It could be the right book for the right times as we look ahead with the economy in mind. Young people are more than ever examining their options.”
– Patty AcheyCutts, University Book & Supply, Cedar Falls, Iowa

“Deft and detailed case studies bring the population to life, making the poor prognosis heartrending. . . . Whatever the future may hold, the authors alert readers to this major change with clarity and compassion.”
–Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

When the MacArthur Foundation’s Network on Transitions to Adulthood dispatched sociologists Patrick Carr and Marie Kefalas to Ellis, Iowa, their interest was in examining the experiences of young adults from rural communities as compared to that of their peers in the cities and suburbs of the coasts and the Midwest.  Ultimately, though, Carr and Kefalas’s research took them beyond an analysis of young people’s experiences and into the heart of how small town America is sowing the seeds of its own decline.

In Hollowing Out the Middle, Carr and Kefalas link the troubling exodus from America’s small towns to the ways young people’s paths are shaped by the adults who surround them as they grow up. They describe a selecting and sorting process in which some of a town’s young are positioned to leave for higher education and lives beyond their rural roots, while others are sidelined, destined to become hourly wage earners in their hometown’s struggling economy. They underscore how this process, long practiced and rarely questioned, is contributing to an out-migration epidemic that is slowly destroying America’s heartland.  

Drawing on over a hundred interviews with young Iowans spread over fifteen states, Carr and Kefalas follow the trajectories of college-bound “Achievers”; working-class “Stayers,” trapped in a dying agro-industrial economy; “Seekers,” who join the military as a way out; and “Returners,” who eventually circle back to their hometowns. They talk to graduates from the University of Iowa who head for cities and high paying jobs; to those who made it through high school, but are stuck making $15 dollars an hour building ambulances and assembling microprocessors; to high school dropouts who put eggs in cartons or slaughter hogs at the meat processing plant, and to enlisted soldiers who joined the military for a number of reasons, from the signing bonus and medical coverage to the promise of a college education. 

Noting that it is critical for Americans to understand the importance of investing in rural communities, Carr and Kefalas go on to examine the range of solutions that governors and senators from Maine to Montana have put forth in trying to lure twenty-somethings back home, including tax cuts and credits, loan forgiveness and free land programs, and focusing on “the three Ts”—talent, technology, and tolerance—in building a more vibrant cultural scene.  Iowa’s “brain-gain” campaign, they report, has included invitations to attend lavish cocktail parties with the governor and ads promoting the state as more than just “hogs, acres of corn, and old people.”  

The authors contend, though, that most local and national policies are aimed at attracting the educated leavers while ignoring both the untapped resources of those who stayed and the reasons the non- professional Returners came back.  They call for economic initiatives that would satisfy the job needs of knowledge workers, as well as those that don’t have college degrees. They point to how the heartland could meet emerging demands for local food production, sustainable agriculture and renewable clean energy and underscore the importance of building microeconomies, upgrading small towns’ digital technology infrastructure, and investing in human-capital development so that rural areas can compete in the globalized marketplace.  

 Carr and Kefalas also offer specific educational solutions, including using the community college infrastructure to build technical skills among Stayers and Returners and creating high school vocational and pre-professional programs in accounting, business, nursing, and medical and computer technology for non-college bound students.  Finally, they look at how immigration, if managed in ways that reduce intergroup tensions, can contribute to a region’s growth and viability.  

ABOUT THE AUTHORS Patt Carr

 Patrick J. Carr is associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, and Maria J. Kefalas is associate professor of sociology at Saint Joseph’s University in Pennsylvania. The authors, who have three published books between them, live outside Philadelphia.Maria Kefalas

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