Second American Nations. I take issue with, in parts of it he has an elitist, typical Yankee patronizing tone against the South, but overall it’s well done work. As far as I know, it is the most comprehensive work in highlighting the diversity in culture and history of the US, and why we appear to be so divisive.

If you read news and opinion articles from the early 1900’s you’ll find that many authors are saying the same thing as people say today. In context of American Nations, the answer is “we’ve always been like that.”

Go back to "The Nine Nations Of North America" by Joel Garreau in 1981.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Nations_of_North_Amer...

Non-Amazon link for Albion’s Seed: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/01bed638-8991-4afe-a530-...

Great book and a great shortened synopsis here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/27/book-review-albions-se...

You didn’t miss it, because there was no methodology to speak of. Colin Woodard isn’t a sociologist or historian, he is a reporter for the Maine Sunday Telegram who wrote a book premised on the idea that the arc of 300-400 years of culture and history of the various regions of the US are cleanly defined entirely by the initial groups that settled them. Every region has a stupid, manufactured brand (it’s not the West Coast and New England, it’s the “Left Coast” and “Yankeedom”). What little data that is referenced is cherry picked to support the narratives. It’s also hilariously patronizing (spoiler: The reporter from Maine concludes that New England and the West Coast are the epitome of all that is clean and good, and everyone else are barbarians and unwashed rubes).

It is closer to a Buzzfeed quiz explaining how your astrological sign dictates your Hogwarts House than anything remotely resembling academic rigor.

i'd like to see more methods, because that Midlands region looks similar to the types of artifacts I used to get doing various unsupervised learning projects.

that shape screams "there are a couple of clear clusters nearby, and this is the leftover 'in-between' space we didn't know how to handle so we made a new cluster"

I thought this too, it seems to be a map of who the original people were to the region (including cases where major immigrant groups who created the region), but none of the methodology is listed or really makes sense, making it not very useful. Seems rich of the author though to suggest the region he's from is deeply complex, while the regions he isn't from are painted with a broad brush

No, it's not in the text at the original link, however, yes, there is a link to the full article in the blurb with the how: https://www.nationhoodlab.org/the-american-nations-regions-a...

There's an entire book from the author on this topic [1]

[1] https://www.amazon.com/American-Nations-History-Regional-Cul...

I can see the similarities between Amarillo and Knoxville. Every city on I-40 feels similar to me until Albuquerque, having spent time in a number of Tennessee cities and having to visit wife's hometown in Texas.

Low key writing this has made me realize how much of my life has just been migrating up and down I-40.

As someone that grew up partly in Southern Illinois with lots of relatives in Southern Indiana I can tell you they have a great deal in common. Both regions are very "southern" culturally, with very distinct accents.

Illinois is an interesting place as it features large changes in culture from north to south. I was born in Northern Illinois and lived there until I was 10 when I moved 5 hours south. There is an enormous cultural difference. As the map shows Northern Illinois is part of the "Midlands" with a flat/generic accent whereas the Southern Illinois/Southern Indiana accent sounds a lot like Woody Harrelson's (who was born in Texas). The greater Chicagoland area is its own thing, the map shows it part of Yankeedom but I disagree - I lived in Chicago twice in my 20s and I've lived in Yankeedom (Massachusetts) for 25 years now and I don't see much similarity. I'd group far northern Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota in their own group, maybe called the "Opers"

About as accurate as grouping the entire west coast stretching from Alaska to SoCal as a monoculture.

I agree. However, I will say that I always thought that Southern Indiana and Southern Ohio were more similar than Southern Indiana and Northern Indiana.

Hey now, at least the NFL agrees with them

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFC_South

Scots-Irish migration.

Yeah, this weirdly splits the Atlanta metro area in half between two regions based on the counties, and while north Atlanta and south Atlanta metro have decidedly differing cultures (along mostly but not entirely racial lines) the split is completely arbitrary on county lines with Fulton County, GA jutting upwards as if the 10 miles across that county don't represent anything on either side of it

I'd imagine all the borders are fuzzy, but maybe that's the only spot where a broad enough area was that way to note it.

I live pretty much on the border between two regions on the map, and you can definitely see a difference just driving one county north or south. But of course you also see exceptions on both sides, in both individual homes or small towns that seem more suited for the other side of the border.

Got me with this one.

The criteria is dominant ancestry source. Loyalists generally came from the red area and dark green areas of the US, but that'd be confusing recursion if Canadian regions were defined as where in the US people came from vs US regions being defined by where in Europe they came from.

The whole section around DC is..questionable. PG, Fairfax, and Loudoun counties are all in the Tidewater group that extends down to the NC triangle. Meanwhile Montgomery County, which is right over the Potomoc from Fairfax/Loudoun, is in a separate group that's shared with Philadelphia and Ohio? MoCo, Fairfax, and Loudoun are all incredibly similar both culturally and economically (i.e. wealthy DC suburbanites) and should either all be in the Tidewater category or in some separate "Capital Area" nation.

I noticed that recent research showed that South Dakota has a high level of dark triad characteristics:

https://www.newsweek.com/psychology-psychopaths-dark-triad-m...

and my first though is "What's different about South Dakota and North Dakota" and got told by a friend who's a geography nerd that much of South Dakota is really weird and isolated and different from other states.

Same for Minneapolis, Boston, and Des Moines.

Agreed. What the western parts of this map avoids is that the cultures are a mix of mostly descendent European cultures (Norwegian, Irish, German, etc.) and Hispanic cultures especially in the south differs strongly once you go north of Colorado.

..north of mexico

On a population basis, though, not really - most Canadians live near the border, in one of the various regions that span the border on this map.

"There's a Canada outside of Toronto?" - Torontonians

(all in good jest)

Really weird to not list Deseret as its own thing honestly (all of Utah, Colorado west of the Divide, Idaho up to Rexburg, most of Nevada that isn't Tahoe/Reno/Vegas)

Same as it ever was. The "Empty Quarter"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Nations_of_North_Amer...

I'm reminded of the children's book Gila Monsters Meet You at the Airport, the first half of which is some kid's stereotypes of what life is like "Out West" (including the title). Then his family completes the move "Out West", and finds that things are quite a bit different from how he expects.

Marrying a woman from Louisiana has been similarly instructive to me as regards "the South".

Look again, it's under Yankeedom. Anticosti and the Magdelenes are nearby and under New France.

It seems so. Greenland as First Nation is straight up chauvinism.

There are, uh, plenty of crocs and pajama pants at the many New Orleans McDonald's locations.

I also don't think the US ended up absorbing much British cuisine, certainly native food(s) and immigrant waves have contributed much more than England.