Shaping Minnesota's Identity illustrates the pressures and choices Minnesotans have faced in their 150-year history. State and national events have affected Minnesota's social, political, and economic paths. Minnesotans have shared the nation's prosperity and its depressions. A landscape of 15,000 lakes, prairie soils, the North Woods, and the Mesabi iron range also makes this history unique, as does an ever-changing ethnic composition. The state's history is a chaotic tapestry of diverse voices, intense political passions, divergent social forces, and distinct geographical arenas, all of which helped shape the identity of its people and the political direction of the state.

This book is a Minnesota Sesquicentennial Book.

This book has been selected as a ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Finalist. Visit the www.forewordmagazine.com for more information.

This book has been selected as a Midwest Booksellers Association Midwest Favorite. Visit the www.midwestbooksellers.org for more information.

The Author
A lifelong resident of the state, Steven J. Keillor earned his PhD in History at the University of Minnesota. He has written biographies of two Minnesota governors-one of a Republican (Knute Nelson) and one of a Farmer-Laborite and DFLer (Hjalmar Petersen). The Minnesota Historical Society published his history of the state's rural cooperatives, as well as a memoir of a First-Minnesota soldier in the Civil War that he edited. He has also written about the Grand Excursion of 1854 and the history of the city of Rochester. He teaches Minnesota history at Bethel University in St. Paul. Keillor has three children and two grandchildren, and he resides with his wife Margaret in Askov, Minnesota. Visit Steven Keillor's Web site at www.stevekeillor.com.