FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  Jan. 7, 2008
CONTACT:  Jeff Mammenga, (605) 773-6000

Lauck to discuss book at Cultural Heritage Center

PIERRE, S.D. -- John Lauck will be at the South Dakota Cultural Heritage Center on Wednesday, Jan. 9, at noon, to discuss his book Daschle Vs. Thune--Anatomy of a High-Plains Senate Race. 

The race between Tom Daschle and John Thune in South Dakota was widely acknowledged as “The other big race of 2004.” Second in prominence only to the presidential race, the Daschle-Thune contest pitted the rival political ideologies that have animated American politics since the 1960s. In a sign of the ongoing strength of political conservatism, Daschle became the first Senate leader in 50 years to lose a re-election bid.

Historian Jon K. Lauck, a South Dakotan who was an insider during that heated campaign, now offers a multilayered examination of this hard-fought and symbolically charged race. Blending historical narrative, political analysis, and personal reflection, he offers a close-up view of the issues that divide the nation—a case study of the continuing clash between liberalism and conservatism that has played out for more than a generation in United States politics.

Daschle vs. Thune moves beyond the nitty-gritty of public policy to deftly show how the recent past continues to shape the ongoing political battles that animate pundits and bloggers. It is a compelling story told by a writer who knows both his home ground and how it fits into the wider U.S. context.

Lauck is senior advisor to U.S. Sen. John Thune and author of American Agriculture and the Problem of Monopoly: The Political Economy of Grain Belt Farming, 1953–1980.

The book is available for sale for $24.95 at the South Dakota Heritage Store in the Cultural Heritage Center, headquarters of the South Dakota State Historical Society.