“Rural and Small Town America: Context, Composition, and Complexities” (University of California Press, 2024), authored by Tim Slack, professor of sociology at Louisiana State University, and co-authored by Shannon M. Monnat, professor of sociology and Lerner Chair in Public Health Promotion and Population Health, shares lessons offered from rural society and confronts common myths and misunderstandings about rural people and places. 

The main premise of Slack and Monnat’s book: rural America is not monolithic. It is diverse across multiple dimensions and is facing substantial social changes and challenges that also have important implications for urban and suburban America.

The authors share how social, economic and demographic changes pose problems and opportunities for rural communities. Additionally, they assess changes in population size and composition, economies and livelihoods, ethnoracial diversity and inequities, population health and health disparities, and politics and policies.

Monnat is director of and senior research associate in the Center for Policy Research, co-director of the Policy, Place, and Population Health Lab, senior research associate in the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health, and a research affiliate in the Aging Studies Institute and Center for Aging and Policy Studies. She and Maxwell colleague Jennifer Karas Montez are leading a $1.8 million grant from the National Institute on Aging to support their research on geographic disparities in midlife mortality. 

Slack is a professor in the LSU Department of Sociology. He has taught almost 5,000 students during his career at the university, while publishing extensively on issues confronting rural America. He has also been an investigator on over $18 million in funded research projects supported by the National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Agriculture, among other sources.

From the publisher:

Contemporary America is centered around urban society. Most Americans reside in cities or their surrounding suburbs, and both the media and modern American sociology focus disproportionately on urban life. Rural and Small-Town America looks at what we can learn from rural society and confronts common myths and misunderstandings about rural people and places. Tim Slack and Shannon M. Monnat examine social, economic, and demographic changes and how these changes pose both problems and opportunities for rural communities. They assess changes in population size and composition, economies and livelihoods, ethnoracial diversity and inequities, population health and health disparities, and politics and policies. The central focus of this book is that rural America is no paragon of stability. Social change abounds, accompanied by new challenges. Through analysis of empirical evidence, demographic data, and policy debates, readers will glean insights about rural America and the United States as a whole.