Includes bibliographical references.

Introduction / Hans Bertens and Theo D'haen -- I. Sociological Perspectives. The Small Town: Between Modernity and Post-Modernity / Rob Kroes. Social Science Looks at the American Small Town / Dwight W. Hoover. Robert Lynd's Disenchantment: A Study of Robert Lynd's Cultural Criticism / F. L. van Holthoon. The American Belief in Education with Special Reference to Middletown: Scene of the Rise and Expansion of Higher Education / Jan C. C. Rupp. The Distribution and Diffusion of Power in Middletown: Then and Now / Bruce Geelhoed -- II. Literary Perspectives. From Main Street to Lake Wobegon and Half-Way Back: The Mid-West Small Town as a Literary Place in 20th Century U.S. Literature / Walter Holbling. From the Hamlet to the Mansion: The Voice of the Town in Faulkner's Snopes Trilogy / Gene M. Moore. Home is Where the Heart is: Small Town Experiences in the Fiction of Thomas Wolfe and Hamilton Basso / Inez Hollander Lake. Our Town Revisited: The Small Town in Contemporary American Drama / Hans Bak. Sherwood Anderson's "Middletown": A Sociology of the Midwestern Stories / William V. Miller -- III. The Small Town and Popular Culture. Model Merion: Attempts to Create a Community in a Small Wealthy Philadelphia Suburb / Hans Krabbendam. And a Main Street to Walk Down: The Small Town in the Hollywood Western / Anneke Leenhouts. Capra's Small Town / Nico J. Brederoo. Community Festivals and the Politics of Memory: Postmodernity in the American Heartland / Esther Romeyn and Jack Kugelmass. John Mellencamp's Populist Rock: Folkish Small-Town Narratives and Collective Nostalgia in the Midwest / Mel van Elteren.