Congratulations to Professor Kevin Leicht and Professor Scott Fitzgerald (UI Ph.D., 2003), who have received the 2009 Midwest Sociological Society Best Book Award. The book, Post-Industrial Peasants: the Illusion of Middle Class Prosperity, focuses on the growing economic struggles of the American middle class, arguing that its prosperity is an illusion. In the book, Leicht and Fitzgerald draw parallels between the modern American middle class, peasants in historically feudal societies, and sharecroppers in historically agrarian societies. The MSS Book Award Committee noted that that the book "...continues and updates the honorable tradition of C. Wright Mills in describing how economic elites and the political power structure conspire to harm average Americans." Kevin Leicht is Professor of Sociology at the University of Iowa, and Scott Fitzgerald is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte.