During the half-century after the Civil War, intellectuals and politicians assumed the Midwest to be the font and heart of American culture. Despite the persistence of strong currents of midwestern regionalism during the 1920s and 1930s, the region went into eclipse during the post-World War II era. In the apt language of Minnesota's F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Midwest slid from being the "warm center" of the republic to its "ragged edge." This...