Acknowledgements

Whenever I extol the virtues of OER (Open Educational Resources) to potential creators, I usually mention the fact that a book such as this one need never be finished. The writer can get back to it at any time to edit infelicitous passages, make corrections, delete or amend ideas that have been reconsidered, and add to the book anything conspicuously missing from earlier drafts. In the case of this book, one item that was conspicuously missing from the original, first published fully eight years ago, was an acknowledgments section. It is, I am ashamed to say, long past time for me to have corrected this omission, so here is the missing section.

First, I am indebted to my colleague Joshua Thoms, Department of World Languages and Cultures at USU, who first brought the concept of OER to my attention at just the right time, i.e., in late 2016, as I was trying to zero in on a potential sabbatical project. As luck would have it, the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences was in the process of collaborating with the USU library to encourage faculty to adopt, adapt, or create OER materials. I promptly submitted a proposal. It was accepted, and this book was subsequently funded by a generous OER Grant from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences in partnership with the USU Libraries.

I am also grateful to USU librarian Erin Davis, who oversaw the project, and to student library assistant Sharon Struve. Together they provided invaluable logistical support, helping me learn to use  the Pressbooks platform, resolve design issues, and create the documentation for images. A hearty thanks also to Becky Thoms for her advice on copyright questions.

My sincere appreciation as well to Eliza Rosenberg, who twice served as my honored guest lecturer on the topic of religion and culture and who, despite the many demands on her time as Lecturer in Religious Studies at USU, generously contributed Chapter 8—Religion and Culture.

Thanks, of course, to colleagues Kim Andrus, who demonstrated confidence in the book’s suitability for the IELI 2470 and IELI 2475 class on the occasions when he taught the course, and to Karin DeJonge-Kannan, who adopted the book as one of the source texts at USU for LING 4900—Analysis of Cross-Cultural Difference, a completely different course and audience from the one I originally had in mind.

I am also grateful for the generosity of Colin Woodard, author of  American Nations, in granting me permission to reproduce his map of “The American Nations Today” for use in Chapter 9 of this book.

An enthusiastic shout out to Logan Bolan, too, who ran across this book while doing preliminary research for a book on the Geopolitics of Mormonism. Logan took up the challenge of engaging with a remark I had made about Utah politicians in a section from Chapter 9—Roots of American National Culture, dealing with The Westward Expansion. An enlightening discussion with Logan in late 2025 sent me diving into several sources in an effort to better understand how Utah came to embrace the politics that it does today. Logan’s argument and one of the sources he pointed me to, Ethan Yorgason’s excellent book, Transformation of the Mormon Culture Region, prompted me to revise my previous take on Utah. Of course, I am solely responsible for any errors or lack of nuance in that revision. Logan has gone on to pursue a master’s degree in geography, and I highly recommend readers interested in geography to follow his work.

Sincere appreciation to the thousands of readers around the world who have discovered the book. I hope it has been of use beyond the local context for which I originally crafted it.

Finally, sincerest apologies to anyone who contributed to this project that I have forgotten to thank. But to repeat, the beauty of an OER work is that it can always be updated.

— Nolan Weil, February 15, 2026