The Dakotas are often an overlooked and underexamined part of the United States. No one seems to know whether the region is part of the Midwest or the Real West, and so it often falls between the historiographical cracks. In this excellent study, Jon Lauck examines the political culture of the eastern region of South Dakota in the last decade before statehood. This period has been neglected by recent scholars, in part because it was often assumed that the standard work, Howard Lamar\u27s Dakota Territory, 1861-1889: A Study of Frontier Politics, published in 1956, had said the last word on the subject. But Lauck, while recognizing the strengths and contributions of Lamar\u27s study, also notes that, like all history, it was influenced by the preconceptions and the reigning historical orthodoxy of the era in which it was written and thus may merit reexamination more than a half-century later
