A lot of things started in Indiana the automotive industry for one and Indiana has produced a great many ideas, many wrong headed and some downright wicked. Viewed one way, this book is a study of Indiana ideas, for threads run through it the guest for the better life, bigotry, provincial protest. Viewed another, it is a study of an idea itself, the Hoosier, or Indiana, idea. By the Indiana idea I mean the idea of Indiana and the Hoosiers that is held by people elsewhere. It is a conception of Indiana as a pleasant, rather rural place inhabited by people who are confident, prosperous, neighborly, easygoing, tolerant, shrewd. John Bartlow Martin, from the Preface Indiana: An Interpretation is arguably the best single book ever written about Indiana. First published in 1947, it has long been out of print. Although its view is that of the late forties, it is still as relevant and as accurate today as it was when first issued. Divided into seven sections, it begins with the State Fair as a window on the state as a whole, and then covers the pre-Civil War background, the Civil War and its impact on the state, the golden age of the 1880s to 1900s, Eugene V. Debs and the Hapgoods, the role of four influential and representative citizens, and the period during and just after World War II. An important book for anyone interested in Indiana or in the larger project of defining the heartland of America.