Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper

Author: Cullen, Art

Edition: First Edition, First Printing

Number Of Pages: 336

Details:

"A reminder that even the smallest newspapers can hold the most powerful among us accountable."—The New York Times Book ReviewIowa plays an outsize role in national politics. Iowa introduced Barack Obama and voted bigly for Donald Trump. But is it a bellwether for America, a harbinger of its future? Art Cullen’s answer is complicated and honest. In truth, Iowa is losing ground. The Trump trade wars are hammering farmers and manufacturers. Health insurance premiums and drug prices are soaring. That’s what Iowans are dealing with, and the problems they face are the problems of the heartland. In this candid and timely book, Art Cullen—the Storm Lake Times newspaperman who won a Pulitzer Prize for taking on big corporate agri-industry and its poisoning of local rivers—describes how the heartland has changed dramatically over his career. In a story where politics, agri­culture, the environment, and immigration all converge, Cullen offers an unsentimental ode to rural America and to the resilient people of a vibrant community of fifteen thousand in Northwest Iowa, as much sur­vivors as their town.

Reviews:

An Honoree of the Society of Midland Authors Literary Award

"Cullen’s book demonstrates the important role that local editors play in standing up and speaking to power in America... Storm Lake is an engaging, folksy read about how a small-town newspaper editor copes with existential threats to a way of life and an industry vital to American democracy in a state known for its extremes of weather, economics, and politics. [Cullen] tells good stories and writes with a journalistic flair that prefers punch to polish...The pages of Storm Lake clearly demonstrate why Cullen won journalism’s most revered prize." —The National Book Review

"With a self-effacing, homespun honesty...Cullen makes an eloquent case that community newspapers are integral to the fabric of small towns..[and] that diversity is keeping Storm Lake alive. Many Latino, Laotian and Vietnamese families work in the packinghouses. Cullen argues that these families have thrown a much-needed life preserver to Storm Lake’s economy." —StarTribune

“An engaging storyteller, Cullen recounts the deeds (and misdeeds) of youth, but his writer's passion shines when he discusses the events that led him to write the prize-winning editorials. . . The moral, economic, and social history of a small town in Iowa might not seem like much of a story, but in Cullen's hands, it is.” —Booklist

" Storm Lake is a must-read, and it is a great read."

— WBUR

“An impassioned, significant book from a newsman who made a difference.”

— Kirkus Reviews (starred)  

“[A] memoir that gracefully illuminates the challenges facing the American heartland. Composed of political history, tales of civic controversies, and human interest stories, the subject matter is elevated by Cullen’s passion into parables relevant to all Americans . . . a window into small-town America.”

— Publishers Weekly“Read this book and you will understand why Art Cullen’s courageous writing—sensitive, challenging, sometimes abrasive—helped build Storm Lake into, as Cullen phrases it, ‘a community, not just an unrelated gathering of people.’ Cullen captures, in prose that is almost poetry, the ethos of small town, rural Iowa, the heart and soul of the ‘good America.’”

—Tom Harkin, former United States Senator from Iowa  

“Mechanization may have driven out small farmers, smothered the lake, and helped push the town paper to the edge of starvation, but Storm Lake has persevered, clutching its social fabric against the forces that have torn so much of the rural plains asunder. If you care about the future of the Republic, Art Cullen’s thoughtful, clear-eyed ode to his western Iowa hometown is not to be missed.” —Colin Woodard, author of American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America and American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty...

EAN: 9780525558873

Release Date: 02-10-2018

Languages: English

Item Note: Great shape- pages are unmarked and sharp.Has a remainder mark. Hardcover Used - Like New Ships fast! 2018First Edition, First Printing

Item Condition: UsedLikeNew

Binding: Hardcover