Ancient glaciers passed by the Driftless Area and waterways vein its interior, forming an enchanting, enigmatic landscape of sharp ridgetops and deep valleys. Across time, this rugged topography has been home to an astonishing variety of people: Sauk, Dakota, and Ho-Chunk villagers, Norwegian farmers and Mexican mercado owners, Dominican nuns and Buddhist monks, river raftsmen and Shakespearean actors, Cornish miners and African American barn builders, organic entrepreneurs and Hmong truck gardeners.

The Driftless Reader gathers writings that highlight the unique natural and cultural history, landscape, and literature of this region that encompasses southwestern Wisconsin and adjacent Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois. The more than eighty selected texts include writings by Black Hawk, Mark Twain, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Frank Lloyd Wright, Aldo Leopold, David Rhodes, and many other Native people, explorers, scientists, historians, farmers, songwriters, journalists, and poets. Paintings, photographs, maps, and other images complement the texts, providing a deeper appreciation of this region's layered natural and human history.

Highlights include excerpts and art from: Carol Ryrie Brink, William Cronon, John T. Curtis, August Derleth, Richard Eberhart, Fabu, Hamlin Garland, Pedro Guerrero, Hoowaneka (Little Elk), Juliet Kinzie, Patty Loew, Ben Logan, Truman Lowe, Jacques Marquette, Ken McCullough, Edna Meudt, Mountain Wolf Woman, Zebulon Pike, Henry Schoolcraft, Clifford D. Simak, Wallace Stegner, Pearl Swiggum, Frank Utpatel, Mark Wunderlich.