Description: This is a history of the small agricultural community of Fountain Green, located in west central Illinois, during the middle of the 19th century. The focus is on the change from a subsistence--oriented Jeffersonian agrarianism during the early settlement stage to a full--scale market capitalist agriculture in the period after the Civil War. Two major subthemes are the mixed ethnic and cultural roots of the community--southern, Yankee, and a predominant Middle Atlantic element from Pennsylvania--and changes in family and gender relationships that gradually eroded traditional patriarchy. Three major conflicts threatened Fountain Green's sense of community--the removal of the Mormons in the 1840s, the Civil War, and the Grange movement in the 1870s and 1880s. This latest volume in the publisher's Midwestern History and Culture series is based on an unusually diverse range of sources. While the scope of this work is rather narrow, and it occasionally shows signs of its origin as a dissertation, specialists in rural, agricultural, and Midwest history, as well as those interested in 19th--century gender studies or the economics of the development of market capitalism, will find it worthwhile reading. Upper--division undergraduates and above.K. Blaser, Wayne State College, Choice, January 2002

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