In October, I will be reviewing Denison, Iowa by Dale Maharidge.  Maharidge’s first book, Journey to Nowhere: The Saga of the New Underclass, moved Bruce Springsteen to write songs the songs “New Timer” and “Young’s Town.”  In 1990, Maharidge won the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction for And Their Children After Them. Maharidge is a professor at Columbia School of Journalism.

In this nonfiction book, Maharidge discusses the lives of people and their adaptation to a changing culture in a Midwest town during the era of Pax Americana. Pax Americana is a historical concept of liberal peace in the Western world due to the “power” of the United States around the turn of the 20^th century.