Our Towns
A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America
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4.1 • 24 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "James and Deborah Fallows have always moved to where history is being made.... They have an excellent sense of where world-shaping events are taking place at any moment" —The New York Times • The basis for the HBO documentary streaming on HBO Max
For five years, James and Deborah Fallows have travelled across America in a single-engine prop airplane. Visiting dozens of towns, the America they saw is acutely conscious of its problems—from economic dislocation to the opioid scourge—but it is also crafting solutions, with a practical-minded determination at dramatic odds with the bitter paralysis of national politics. At times of dysfunction on a national level, reform possibilities have often arisen from the local level. The Fallowses describe America in the middle of one of these creative waves.
Their view of the country is as complex and contradictory as America itself, but it also reflects the energy, the generosity and compassion, the dreams, and the determination of many who are in the midst of making things better. Our Towns is the story of their journey—and an account of a country busy remaking itself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Creativity, know-how, diversity, and public-spiritedness are the perhaps surprising national trends unearthed in this exuberant exploration of economic development in Middle America. In researching the book, husband-and-wife journalists James Fallows (China Airborne) and Deborah Fallows (Dreaming in Chinese) flew around the country in their prop plane surveying unsung renaissances of cities and small towns. They find commonplaces like the ubiquitous downtown-revitalization quartet of tech-startup incubator, waterfront bike path, arts festival, and microbrewery as well as idiosyncrasies: Bend, Ore.'s marijuana shop; Duluth, Minn.'s growing aviation sector; new factories and vocational training in Columbus, Miss., and cutting-edge fashion design in Columbus, Ohio. Unlike the usual community-activism narratives, the authors spotlight a civic establishment of urban planners, development officials, strong mayors, and business boosters; they also cite as keys to prosperity brainy innovators at universities, hard-working immigrants, and citizens willing to raise taxes for needed government services. The Fallowses' reportage from fly-over territory occasionally feels schmaltzy "n the Best Western breakfast room, Miss Nettie was making grits and biscuits" and they skirt troubling features of development strategies, like the antiunion animus of Southern states. Still theirs is an eye-opening, keenly optimistic reminder of the strength of America's vital center.
