Regarding Maine on the occasion of its 200th anniversary of statehood, in the Boston Globe

Maine turned 200 this year, but the Bicentennial celebrations were cancelled by the pandemic, with Gov. Mills spending the official birthday, March 15, advising Mainers to lockdown to prevent the spread of the then barely understood coronavirus.

I wrote a six-part series for the Maine Sunday Telegram on statehood's meaning that wrapped up just as Covid-19 spread into the state back in March, but I also wanted to present some key points to an external audience, one in Massachusetts in particular for reasons readers of The Lobster Coast will quickly ascertain. So in this week's Boston Sunday Globe Ideas section, I had this essay on Maine's experience as a colony of a colony, how it shaped our culture and people, and the ways in which the pandemic and other global developments may shake up the postcolonial trajectory my native state has long been on. Hope you enjoy.

This is my first byline in the Globe, but in September I spoke to Ideas staff writer David Sharfenberg about the battle for the national "soul" of the U.S., the topic of my most recent book, Union.

Update, 10/30/20: Bloomberg's Boston bureau has a radio show and podcast, Bloomberg Baystate Business, and hosts Tom Moroney and Joe Shortsleeve kindly had me on the show today to talk about the phenomena described in the Globe piece. My portion starts at 0:50:32.

How Turner's Frontier Thesis led Americans astray

Frederick Jackson Turner of "Frontier Thesis" fame is one of the key subjects of Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood, being the primary figure in creating the idea that American-ness was born on the expanding western frontier.

As I argued in this essay that appeared in Sunday's Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Turner's thesis was enormously influential, but entirely wrong. In fact, on digging further into the data, even Turner quickly realized this and pivoted to researching what he thought were the primary determinants of American political and sociological history: the difference between the competing "sections," or regional cultures. He spent the rest of his life trying to write a master work on this, a book that from his shorter form essays on the subject, could have resembled my American Nations in many ways.

Hope you enjoy the article. And if you want the full story, it's all in Union.

For a bit on another major figure in the book, Woodrow Wilson, see this in Talking Points Memo.

A New York Times American Nations OpEd

The New York Times asked me to write an opinion piece on the political implications of American Nations recently and, to my great pleasure, accepted it and built a terrific graphics package to illustrate the paradigm.

The result was published yesterday at the Times and -- thank all of you -- shot up to be the most read piece on the entire site this morning. I've mentioned before the power of the colorized map in drawing people's attention on social media, and I'm doubly sure of it now.

Thanks to John Guida and Bill Marsh for their time and attention.

For those new to the paradigm -- and wanting to know more, a couple of quick links:

To really understand what this is all about: please do read the book.

To wade in a little deeper without the book: start with this Tufts Magazine piece, which unpacks the paradigm in more detail and uses it to analyze a public policy issue -- violence and gun control -- that isn't presented in the book at all. Or, conversely, look at this Washington Monthly article to see why the (libertarian-captured) Tea Party Movement fizzled in places candidate Trump (relatively communitarian on the stump) would make inroads.

To see more data on the rural vs urban issue: dig into this piece I did for Medium.

For more on Trump and the 2016 election: check out this at the Portland Press Herald.

To find out what's up with Alaska, Hawaii and South Florida: go here.

To see me present the whole thing in detail to an audience: CSPAN's got that.

To explore the central debate of our federal experience -- the proper balance between individual liberty and the common good -- consider reading American Nations' sequel, American Character.

Gulenists, accused of orchestrating coup in Turkey, have been very active in Maine

Fehtullah Gulen, an influential imam who has lived in exile in the Poconos of Pennsylvania for decades, stands accused by Turkey's increasingly autocratic president, Recep Erdogan, of masterminding the recent military coup attempt in Turkey. Gulenists -- followers of Gulen and his Hizmet movement -- are being ejected from their jobs or rounded up by the tens of thousands, from journalists and teachers to military officers and police leaders as Erdogan seeks to snuff out what he calls a "tumor" on his nation.

Bizarrely, Gulenists have also been extremely active here in Maine. In this week's Maine Sunday Telegram, I have a commentary essay reviewing the vigorous cultural and diplomatic outreach programs Gulen's followers have been engaged in for the past four years in Maine, where they've attempted to open two charter schools and developed a bipartisan group of friends and allies in the legislature, governor's office, and among civic leaders.

The essay is a sequel to and update on this Press Herald story I wrote back in 2013, which revealed the Gulenist connections at the first proposed charter school.

Incidentally, I'm a fan of Turkish culture and the impressive cultural legacy of the Ottoman Empire, whose former territories I lived in for most of the 1990s. My most recent story from Turkey was this 1998 travel piece for the Christian Science Monitor from Cappadocia.

"New York Values" are New Netherland Values

Ever since presidential hopeful Ted Cruz (R-Deep South) accused his fellow demagogue, Donald Trump of having "New York Values", the internet has plunged into a discussion of what constitutes such values and whether distancing oneself from them will "work" politically for Sen. Cruz. Trump predictably went to the 9/11 response as illustrative of such values; Cruz responded with a denouncement of abortion and gay rights, correctly said to be widely championed in the Big Apple.

It should come as no surprise that I'd argue "New York Values" are centuries old, dating back to the fundamental ethos of tolerance, materialism, and multiculturalism of the New Netherland colony and the Golden Age Amsterdam culture that created it. It's an argument laid out in my book, American Nations, of course, but I haven't had a chance to distill it for insertion the current debate.

Thankfully, Jordan Fraade, a student of urban policy at UCLA, has done it for me. Writing at Al Jazeera America, Fraade lays out the city's culture, correctly recognizing that tolerance is a double edged sword: tolerant of difference, yes, but also of slavery. It's the sort of place that would never vote for Donald Trump, but certainly helped nurture the creation of a morally flexible, highly materialistic real estate baron with global branding ambitions and a relatively liberal stance toward social programs (for "real Americans" as opposed to those dirty "others" on whom the people's problems can be blamed.) He's not a tolerant fellow, to be sure, but in other ways he's recognizably New Netherland-ish. It's hard to imagine him having grown out of Greater Appalachia, even though that's where the core of his support is.

For Ted Cruz, attacking the tolerant, diverse world of New Netherland makes sense: his base isn't much fond of either, nor are the Evangelicals who mysteriously support Trump, who Cruz needs to peel off to win the GOP nomination.

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....

Some more on the Republican's Yankee Problem

For those with an interest in how regionalism is shaping U.S. politics, I have a new extended essay in today's Maine Sunday Telegram on how the G.O.P. has managed to make itself all-but extinct in the region of its birth.

The argument is built on the framework developed in my most recent book, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. If you're interested in examining the "nations map" more closely, there's a high-resolution PDF available here at World Wide Woodard.

Readers of the print edition will find it on the front of the Insight section today. My thanks to staff artist Michael Fisher for the excellent "elephant-in-the-boat"  illustration.

Regular readers will recall that I floated an initial version of this argument last month at Washington Monthly's Ten Miles Square.

The 2012 U.S. Election and the American Nations

If you've been on the edge of your seat, wondering if the U.S. election would play out as suggested by the regional map put forth in American Nations, the waiting is over. It did, almost to a T, and no surprise given that the general election became an explicit choice between those two touchstones of American regional conflict, individual liberty against communal freedom.

I hold forth on this in this OpEd piece today at Bloomberg View, which just over a year ago published a five part series of excerpts adapted from the book. (It's worth a click just to enjoy the illustration, which features a fight between a cartoon-like Puritan and Appalachian frontiersman.)

Enjoy and, as always, let me know what you think.

[Update, 20:17: The Minneapolis Star-Tribune picked up this OpEd, with a fun cartoon of their own.]

On American Nations in the Fredricksburg (Va) Freelance-Star

For those in the Tidewater country, my OpEd on America's regional cultures is in today's Freelance-Star, the daily newspaper in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and serving a swath of south exurban D.C.

"Not one America, but Many," encapsulates the thesis of my new book, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, and some of the implications it has for this year's U.S. presidential contest.

[Update, 2/9/2012: The McClatchy-Tribune News Service has picked up this OpEd, which ran today in Washington state's Bellingham Herald and Florida's Bradenton Herald.]

I've been delighted with the media attention the book has received since it was released at the end of September, including the PBS News Hour, The Washington Post, The Week, Boston Globe, Daily Beast, Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Arizona Republic, Bloomberg, Rolling Stone.com, Maine Sunday Telegram, Charleston Post & Courier, the CBC, Northeast, Jefferson, Maine, and New Hampshire Public Radio, Annapolis Capital, and the Raleigh News & Observer. It was named a Best Book of 2011 by both The New Republic and The Globalist. I've also been able to demonstrate the analytical utility of the paradigm in understanding current political developments in a feature and blog posts at Washington Monthly.

PBS News Hour interview, Annapolis Capital Thanksgiving message

I was a guest on PBS News Hour last night, talking about American Nations. The segment -- filmed recently at a historic tavern in Alexandria, Virginia -- is now online for those who missed it. My thanks to Margaret Warner and her team for both their interest in the book's thesis and their incredible preparation and engagement with the material.

The segment is, of course, fabulous exposure for the book, especially coming on the heels of the Washington Post's review and being this week's featured author in The Week. It's wonderful to have it catching on right at the opening of both the gift-giving and U.S. presidential campaign seasons.

I also also enjoyed this sweethearted, American Nations-inspired Thanksgiving editorial from The Capital in Annapolis, Maryland. "Thanksgiving is being celebrated today in all of Garreau's nine nations and Woodard's 11 regional cultures," The Capital's editors write. "These feelings aren't different in Woodard's Tidewater, Greater Appalachia, Yankeedom, Deep South or anywhere else under the Stars and Stripes. They aren't limited by politics. And they unite us - even if it's only for one day - with each other."

Finally, a Black Friday reminder for those of you in southern Maine: I'll be joining 25 other authors to meet readers and sign books at the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance Holiday Book Sale today, 12-3 at the Portland Public Library. Come if you can.

Arizona Republic, St. Louis Post-Dispatch on American Nations

My new book, American Nations, was featured in two major Sunday papers today.

The Arizona Republic carried an OpEd with my byline -- "The great divide" --crafted from excerpts of the book. It lays out the central argument that the U.S. is really a federation of disparate "nations" and always has been and notes that it can only function through compromise at the federal level; that's how the deal between the component regional cultures was brokered.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reviews the book in today's paper, calling it important if not "easy" reading. The reviewer also seems to have misread the "nations" map in the book: the counties that make up the St. Louis metro area are divided between the Midlands and Greater Appalachia, just as the text in the book notes. (Similarly, Chicago is another "border city" straddling the Midlands and Yankeedom.