Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas’s “Hollowing Out the Middle” look[s] to people—exchanging the unifying ecological concept of the prairie for the unifying sociological concept of the Heartland. Carr and Kefalas explain that they chose a single town in Iowa for their research “because it is typical of the many towns that are finding it difficult to survive, and its travails could be those of any of the thousands of depopulating rural communities stretching from western Pennsylvania to the Texas Panhandle.”…. Carr and Kefalas acknowledge the dangers of extrapolating from such small samples, they attempt, through careful observation, to demonstrate that the recent “rural crisis” is no less perilous than the better known “urban crisis” of the past fifty years. The abandoned barns of the countryside, often celebrated as picturesque, are the mirror images of the burned-out factories and apartment blocks of Newark, the Bronx and Detroit; and methamphetamine addiction and production, which became widespread throughout small-town America in the 1980s and 1990s, is as catastrophic as the urban crack epidemic. An emphasis on decades of neglect, combined with detailed stories from struggling Iowa towns, make[s]….”Hollowing Out” a powerful work of sociology and reportage.

—The Nation – October 4, 2010

“Hollowing out the Middle” represents what should be a critically influential study for guiding education reform in rural America. Using survey data from 275 former high school students, in-depth interviews with more than 100 young adults across the nation who attended the high school in the late 1980s and early 1990s, coupled with intensive community-level fieldwork, the husband-wife team of sociology professors, Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas chronicle the “coming-of-age” experiences of youth who formerly attended high school in “Ellis,” Iowa. In the process they uncover how a high school and its community inadvertently contribute to the brain drain and “hollowing out” of a small town in America’s heartland. Read More »

—Hobart L. Harmon for the Journal of Research in Rural Education – 05/12/2010

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that the majority of our readership doesn’t live in a rural area. I mean, the majority of America’s population doesn’t live in a rural area—that’s what makes it rural, right? Up until about two years ago, neither did I. But since moving to a small rural town in western Kansas (population: 800) just over two years ago, I’ve become very interested and involved in community development, and particularly in the issues surrounding youth and young adults. One significant issue that comes up again and again is this: Is there a solution to the “brain drain”—that is, the reality that the brightest kids often leave for bigger cities and don’t come back? Is the solution to attract more kids back after college, to improve the education of the kids who are planning to stay, or something else entirely? Read More »

—Jonathan Liu for Wired.com – 02/01/2010

What can attract an intellectual to rural society? “Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America” is a discussion of the exodus of thinkers from middle America and the heartland. The authors, Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas, moved to a small town to study the social aspects of working class people who stay in their home towns and try to make ends meet for the good of themselves and their town. These towns, they argue, are hurt most when their brightest young people leave upon reaching adulthood. An interesting discussion of the fate of small town America and what could truly be the cause, “Hollowing Out the Middle” is a fascinating and highly recommended read. Read More »

—The Midwest Book Review, “The Social Issues Shelf”, December 2009.

A new book must be added to the short shelf of good books about the Midwest. It’s called “Hollowing Out The Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America” (Beacon Press), and it tells why so many Midwestern small towns are literally committing civic suicide. The problem lies with the towns themselves in general and with the schools in particular, and fixing it means changing the way these towns have always looked at themselves and their children. Read More »

—Richard C. Longworth for The Midwesterner – 12/10/2009

Deftly researched and written, this book is highly recommended for sociologists, educators, policymakers, and anyone concerned about the future of this country. Read More »

—Starred Reviews: November 2009 – Library Journal

Take the new book Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America by sociologists Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas. Admitted urbanites whose original research agenda didn’t include a detour through the country, Carr and Kefalas undertook an ethnographic study of youth pathways to adulthood in a pseudonymous small Iowa town, “Ellis.” But if you didn’t read their confession about not being rural residents themselves, you probably wouldn’t be able to guess it. Carr and Kefalas are sensitive to the ways rural people and places are invoked in national debates, as homogenous representatives of the family values, keenly patriotic, white and working class “real” America on the one hand, or as unsophisticated, uninformed, pre-modern, and perhaps dangerously reactionary hillbillies on the other. Read More »

—Caitlin Howley for Daily Yonder – 10/26/2009

A Midwest Connections selection for October, 2009.

A sign on the outskirts of Jewell, Iowa, greets visitors with the homey slogan, “A Gem in a Friendly Setting.” By the railroad tracks that bisect Main Street, a grain silo stands as a totem of the soybean and corn fields that tickle the yards at the town limits. The population recorded by the census of 1990-the year after my family moved to Jewell when I was 13-was 1,106. South Hamilton High School, housed in a low building at the edge of town, launched me into the world every way it could, even hiring me as an office assistant to give me a little spending money. My calculus teacher tutored me during her free period. My English teacher directed me on independent study projects. The guidance counselor coached me through the college application process and, at one point, put me up in his home while my family was out of town. The summer after I graduated, my family moved away, and I left an East Coast college. I’ve been back once. Read More »

—Sarah L. Courteau for Wilson Quarterly – Autumn 2009

The middle of America, so long treated with mirth, mockery and mawkish condescension by coastal smarties, is shrinking. “The Heartland’s most valuable export,” write husband and wife sociologists Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas, is not “crops or hogs but its educated young people.” This migration has devastating effects. From North Dakota to upstate New York, a youthful exodus is “hollowing out many of the nation’s small towns and rural communities.” Read More »

—Bill Kauffman for The Wall Street Journal

With a massive “youth exodus” from heartland America, small towns face extinction. Thousands of small towns in rural America are being depopulated, or “hollowed out.” The brightest and most ambitious young people, dubbed “Achievers” by husband and wife researchers Carr and Kefalas, abandon the heartland for greater challenges and rewards in cities. Their less talented and/or less ambitious brothers and sisters, the “Stayers,” remain in places like smalltown Iowa, where the ethnographers surveyed 275 graduates of a local high school. Deft and detailed case studies bring the population to life, making the poor prognosis heartrending. While the authors insist that “with a plan and a vision” smalltown America can be revitalized, evidence to the contrary seems overwhelming. Globalization, the growth of agribusiness and the Achievers’ hunger for “cultural vibrancy” suggest that the brain drain will not be replaced with a “brain gain”­despite the addition of scattered “Returners” and immigrants. Some analysts suggest that remaining human populations be relocated from the Great Plains and the land be restored to a vast Buffalo Commons, a “venue for bison and prairie restoration”; others foresee the region becoming a bastion for sustainable agriculture and green energy. Whatever the future may hold, the authors alert readers to this major change with clarity and compassion. (Oct.)

—Starred Review in the June 8th Publishers Weekly

The undoing of Middle America is the great secret tragedy of our times. For shining a bright, unwavering light on the unfolding disaster Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas deserve enormous credit; for proposing solutions that actually have a chance of succeeding, they deserve the gratitude of frustrated midwesterners everywhere.

—Thomas Frank, author of What’s the Matter With Kansas? and The Wrecking Crew

Hollowing Out the Middle is a rural panorama of heart-wrenching proportion.

—Stephen G. Bloom, author of Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America and The Oxford Project

Hollowing Out the Middle is a fascinating study that brilliantly describes and analyzes the problems of rural towns in America that are emptying out. It will raise national awareness of a serious domestic problem that has largely escaped media, political, and scholarly attention.

—William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor Harvard University

In Hollowing Out The Middle the authors present a brave and daunting examination of why the most talented, the most productive young people leave our small towns and what can be done to stop this exodus. Those millions, like myself contributors to this Hollowing Out The Middle, who have flourished from the discipline, the warmth, the security, the high expectations and the life-experiences devoutly wish these same small town benefits for their children and grandchildren. This book is so generative, so fiercely compelling that I discovered that in my quiet moments, in my early morning wakeful periods, I became absorbed and engaged in the task of trying to solve the well-nigh unsolvable dilemmas presented here. I urge you to read this book.

Mildred Armstrong Kalish, author of Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression

Reminiscent of the great sociological classics, Middletown and Elmtown’s Youth, Pat Carr and Maria Kefalas have produced an exemplary account of coming of age in a Midwestern town. This book is required reading for the policy and research community and anyone thinking about issues facing young adults in America.

—Frank Furstenberg, Zellerbach Family Chair of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania

Two sociologists’ plan for damming the flow of talented young people from rural America. The American heartland is committing suicide, with profound implications for the whole country, write husband-and-wife team Carr (Sociology/Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick) and Kefalas (Sociology/Saint Joseph’s Univ.). For decades, parents and teachers in small towns such as Ellis-the pseudonymous Iowa community in which the authors lived and conducted research for more than a year-have funneled their brightest young people to college and to careers in big cities. Meanwhile, neglect befalls their less-gifted peers, who are condemned to blue-collar jobs with stagnant wages, or to poverty. The authors acknowledge that this problem is not new. But in a postindustrial economy that prizes education, the process will eventually turn rural communities into impoverished ghost towns…. an impassioned, mostly persuasive manifesto from two advocates for small-town America.

—June 15th issue of Kirkus

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