Talking US national identity and Union on America's Public Forum panel Nov 1

This coming Sunday, November 1, I'll be joining a virtual panel to discuss "The Search for a Shared American Narrative," which in its original 19th century guise, is the topic of my latest book, Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood. 

Fellow panelists are Damon Linker, columnist at The Week; James White, Chairman of the North Carolina Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commission; and David Blankenhorn, President of Braver Angels, a civic non-profit that seeks to depolarize the country.

The panel, which kicks off at 7pm Eastern, is part of the America's Public Forum series on American national identity in the 21st Century and is convened by the Indiana-based Harrison Center, Sagamore Institute, and Braver Angels, as well as the National Institute for Civil Discourse and moderated by Alexandra Hudson, a scholar in residence at Harrison, an arts-as-development organization in Indianapolis.

It's free and open to the public, but as with most virtual events, you need to pre-register.

Speaking on Union (virtually) in Brunswick, Maine, Oct. 28

Tomorrow, October 28, I'll be speaking on my new book, Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood via the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick, Maine. Owing to the pandemic, this will be a virtual event, but the good news is that that means it's free and open to the public, anywhere and everywhere.

The event kicks off at 7pm and you can find the Zoom link and other details at the library's website here.

Signed books are on sale for this virtual event from co-sponsor Gulf of Maine Books, the intrepid independent bookstore that's been on Maine Street in Brunswick since I was in kindergarten. They're old school, so no website -- kind of the anti-Amazon -- so you purchase books tby emailing the store, gulfofmainebooks@gmail.com, or by calling 207-729-5083. You can even arrange to have me personalize them before pickup/shipment, as I live in the area. (I also can offer this service via Portland's Longfellow Books and Print: a Bookstore, which do have websites, if you need that.)

Also thanks to both GrowSmart Maine and the Maine Public Relations Council, each of which had me as a keynote speaker for their annual meetings last week. Enjoyed e-meeting many of you via the events, and speaking about some of the implications of Maine and New England's histories (via Lobster Coast and American Nations for GrowSmart) and the experience of covering 2020, here and away for the Maine PR Council.

My next public virtual event is being hosted out of Indiana: a Nov. 1panel discussion on the U.S. national identity hosted by the National Institute for Civic Discourse, the Sagamore Institute, and others. 

American Nations continues to receive attention from around the country. Here's a roundup:

The emeritus editorial page editor of the Des Moines Register, Richard Doak, had this column Sunday on Iowa and the American Nations, and approved of most of the state being assigned to the Midlands:

"Middle class. Moderate. Standard American. Yes, that describes some of what we like to think of as Iowa characteristics. We might add traits such as a strong work ethic and a certain mind-your-business standoffishness softened by a help-your-neighbor instinct. [...]

And so Iowans share a common culture that overrides regional differences. Woodard calls it the Midlands culture. We might call it Midwestern or just plain Iowan.

Whatever, we should celebrate being the “most American” of Americans. And we should work to stay that way and not tolerate the polarization that’s tearing the rest of America apart."

In the Tribune-Star - on the border of central Indiana and Illinois -- there's this OpEd from Indiana State University sociologist Thomas Steiger. He concludes:

"My interpretation of Woodard’s essay is that we can pretty much culturally divide ourselves with how we answer this question: How do you view “human nature?” Are humans inherently good and “perfectible” or are they inherently “bad,” prone to violence and we must be eternally vigilant lest our neighbor take advantage of us. It’s not whether humanity is or is not like this, it’s what we believe because we act on those beliefs.

We will find the evidence to prove our cultural beliefs. We will form policies and institutions that reflect these basic assumptions, hence, forming culturally separate “nations.”"

Meanwhile, Bill Track 50, the state politics junkie site, had this plug. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch picked up Reid Wilson's essay from the Post. And blogger JayMan had some fun superimposing the American Nations map over Canada's census results for reported ethnicity by census district.

American Nations media frenzy

As regular readers of this space know, American Nations went viral late last week, more than two years after its publication, with interest rapidly spreading into mainstream media.

Over the past week, I'm pleased to say that has developed into a nationwide media frenzy of sorts, capped off by yesterday's interview with Chuck Todd, host of MSNBC's The Daily Rundown. My thanks and appreciation to Todd and his crew for their interest and for so efficiently and accurately setting up the book's paradigm in their introduction.

By Friday afternoon, the book's overall sales rank at Amazon hit #50, an all-time high for one of my titles.

In addition to the interviews and features described or previewed last Sunday, here is a small sample of the attention the book and framework received in this unusual week:

Columnists at a number of big city dailies weighed in on whether I'd gotten their region right, at least based on what they understood from the Washington Post or Tufts Magazine articles. (Few, understandably, got to read the actual book before their weekly deadlines.)  

The Oregonian's David Sarasohn essentially endorsed it, but thinks his state's two cultures get along better than the same ones in, say, California. Up in Washington State, this blogger used the paradigm to analyze Boeing's "regional divide."

Kevin Horrigan at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch just doesn't understand what the map and model are really about, and criticized it for things the book explicitly doesn't say, but it was still nice to have the attention. (Alas.).  By contrast, Ralph De la Cruz at the Dallas Morning News thoughtTexans have been successfully "map pegged."

[Update, 11/17/23: The Omaha World-Herald's Erin Grace had this beautifully-executed piece on The Midlands, Nebraska, and the American Nations in this morning's paper, complete with a new color map.]

South Floridians are up in arms at not being included within the eleven nations I treat in the book. (Would it help if I told you Hawaii and Newfoundland aren't either?) The Miami New Times thought I was arguing that the area "shouldn't be considered part of the United States" (sigh), but at least acknowledged they hadn't read the book. (To my surprise, a lot of their commenters seemed to endorse the idea that Miami "isn't really America", suggesting this is an emotive issue thereabouts.)

I had an enjoyable conversation with Brian O'Neill at The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about whether Allegeheny County belongs in the Midlands or not -- he's sticking with Appalachia though. The Santa Fe Reporter offered no judgment, but expressed relief that they weren't part of New France. Jack Craver at The Capital Times in Madison, wondered aloud if Wisconsin would still qualify as part of Yankeedom under the Scott Walker administration.

Much further afield, there was the Irish Times, whose U.S. correspondent, Simon Carswell, unpacked the model for his country's readers, saying it "helps navigate a greater understanding of what drives people in this vast, eclectic country."

The Wall Street Journal's Market Watch blog had their own piece, as did Andrew Sullivan's The Dish, and the Raleigh News &Observer.

Lots of other papers reprinted the Washington Post piece, which went out on the Post's news service late in the week, from the Tampa Bay Times to Tokyo's Japan Times.

I also had fun chatting with my Portland Press Herald colleague Greg Kesich about the book and the secret of going viral in our in-newsroom television studio Thursday. Earlier today I chatted with the host of CJAD's Viewpoints in Montreal, but alas, the segment isn't up online yet. The one I did with Lakeshore Public Radio in (the Yankee bit of) Indiana earlier in the week is though, as are the previously plugged NPR, BBC, KPCC, and KPFA pieces.

And, finally, the Free Lance-Star of Fredereicksburg, Va., Friday published my recent Washington Monthly piece on the regional divide in the recent Virginia governor's race as an OpEd. Thanks for your interest.

Now to get some sleep....

LePage administration proposes weakening anti-smog regulations

A couple of Maine-related updates that intersect with investigative projects I've done in recent months:

LePage administration and smog: As I report in tomorrow's Portland Press Herald, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection has been quietly seeking to repeal some anti-smog requirements that effect new or newly-modified industrial facilities. Environmentalists are crying foul; the administration says it will be good for the economy. No public hearing has been scheduled, the public comment period ends tomorrow, and the US Environmental Protection Agency (which must approve the change) is allegedly on board with it.

The state DEP was the subject of a five-part, three-day investigation published in the Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram last month. [Update, 8/1/13: some further developments here.]

Steve Bowen's role model in trouble: The Associated Press reports that former Indiana and current Florida education commissioner Tony Bennett -- a pioneer in the effort to assign A-F letter grades to public schools -- cheated on the grading of a charter school run by a political ally. Bennett, a close friend of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, was the keynote at Gov. LePage's education summit earlier this year in Augusta. Education commissioner Steve Bowen described Bennett as his role model in his introductory remarks.

Jeb Bush's Florida-based foundation played a key role in bringing A-F letter grading of schools to Maine, and in ghost writing Maine's digital education and virtual charter school policies.