Brian C. Wilson is Chair and professor of Comparative Religion at Western Michigan University. He is the author of Christianity.

As Brian C. Wilson describes them in this highly readable and entertaining book, Yankees-defined by their shared culture and sense of identity-had a number of distinctive traits and sought to impose their ideas across the state of Michigan.

After the ethnic label of "Yankee" fell out of use, the offspring of Yankees appropriated the term "Midwesterner." So fused did the identities of Yankee and Midwesterner become that understanding the larger story of America's Midwestern regional identity begins with the Yankees in Michigan.