On the occasion of Minnesota's 150th anniversary of statehood, more than a hundred historians and other writers assembled to discuss the subjects they had been studying, thinking, and writing about. This book presents the best of that work, including nineteen essays on topics as varied as baseball at Native American boarding schools, nineteenth-century predictions for Minnesota's future, Native American tourist goods, the Kensington rune stone, and a memoir of growing up in Marshall. Bringing together some of the most recent and best thinking about Minnesota's past and its people, The State We're In demonstrates the history of this place, in all its rich complexity, before and after statehood.

Contributors include Melodie Andrews, Annette Atkins, Marge Barrett, Matt Callahan, Emily Ganzel, Linda LeGarde Grover, Louis Jenkins, David J. Laliberte, James Madison, J. Thomas Murphy, Nora Murphy, Traci M. Nathans-Kelly, Paula Nelson, Patrick Nunnally, Linda Schloff, Gregory Schroeder, Hamp Smith, Barbara W. Sommer, Tangi Villerbu, Howard J. Vogel, Steven Werle, Bill Wittenbreer, and Michael Zalar.

Annette Atkins, author of Creating Minnesota, Harvest of Grief, and We Grew Up Together, teaches at Saint John's University/College of Saint Benedict. Deborah L. Miller, reference specialist at the Minnesota Historical Society and coauthor of Potluck Paradise, is an expert on Minnesota ethnicity and community cookbooks.