Had an enjoyable conversation last week with Monmouth College political scientist Robin Johnson about the story told in Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood for his “Heartland Politics” radio show and podcast.
The show now airs on WVIK, the NPR affiliate for the Quad Cities on Iowa/Illinois border: Davenport, Moline, Rock Island, and Bettendorf and our conversation can be heard here.
The Quad Cities are classic Midlands country, in American Nations terms, and even have a cameo in Union, when the historian George Bancroft, former President Millard Filmore and a crowd of dignitaries arrive in Rock Island in 1854 as part of a junket sponsored by the new Chicago and Rock Island Railroad. They meet a non-descript railroad attorney during a Springfield, Ill. whistle stop on their way home and pay him no mind. They guy’s name was Abraham Lincoln.
But I digress. Please: enjoy the show.
I was last on air in Iowa this summer on Iowa Public Radio’s River to River and was on Robin’s show back when it was still hosted on KBUR just across the Mississippi — thus the change from “K” to “W” in call letters — to talk about what American Nations had to say about the state of US politics.
COLIN WOODARD is a New York Times bestselling author, historian and award-winning journalist. He is the author of seven books that have been translated into a dozen foreign languages and inspired an NBC television drama. He is currently Director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Affairs at Salve Regina University. As State and National Affairs Writer at Maine's Portland Press Herald, he won a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for a 2016 Pulitzer Prize. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, The Economist, Smithsonian and dozens of other major publications.