Seize Your Copy Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into The Heart Of America Penned By James M. Fallows Distributed In Booklet

at those divergent reviews! What I really want to know is can I believe that these ppl, almost 'limousine liberal' people, really know anything about the towns that they profile

Fascinating and tedious, also encouraging and worrisome, all at the same time.
Every town they visited is almost the same story of hope, . . but I'm not sure how many will be successes, A lot of the businesses the new downtowns are attracting aren't sustainable in any uncertain times, much less during this pandemic of course, as they're too niche, too focused on people with extra money.
Most of these towns seem to believe in the motto that 'a rising tide lifts all boats' but just because there's a new highend hotel downtown doesn't mean the housekeepers for it are going to be able to afford health insurance.


And the Fallows never asked the next questions, For example, they mention 'mostly white' towns and 'mostly Latino' neighborhoods, but don't investigate the implications of that, "Poorer and less white" is a correlation they express time and again, If it's accurate, why is it true Address the challenges that are holding whole groups of people back, and you'll go a long way towards 'fixing' your town without having to attract exotic outsiders.


Much less do they investigate how safe other minorities feel, for example atheists, Jews, Muslims, LGBTQ, Native, etc, They talked mostly to civic leaders, school principals, business owners, only occasionally to the actual laborers, staff, students, They don't go to many of the truly small towns,

And they equate Greenville SC and Burlington VT as if all that matters is that the Chamber of Commerce members are happy.
That's not true. I am now living in a politically 'red' community and I gotta tell you, even though I'm white and pass for straight, it sucks and I am looking forward to my next move to a more diverse, liberal, interesting town.
. . even though it's not likely to have a 'thriving downtown' with condos above kitschy coffeehouses and maker spaces,

San Bernadino's focus on scaffolding programs in the public schools looks likely to be very effective, The twist there, of course, is that the most successful students will go away to college or university, and not necessarily come back,

Dodge City: The Fallows admire the citizens for voting for an additionalsales tax increase, A booster brags that they may be 'red' but that they're 'progressive, ' No. A sales tax hits the poor the hardest, . . it is by definition regressive, . . and it is relatively easy to pass, compared to a property or income tax increase, which would be more egalitarian,

And this was published before Trump got elected, Most of his supporters are not better off because of him, so I suspect that a lot of these towns are still struggling, The authors don't seem to have set themselves up to do much followup, . . and there's no back matter advising us that they have plans to do so and inviting us to visit them online, No photos, index, references, list of further reading,

Speaking of Duluth, As of June, my visit there, the downtown is still torn up for reconstruction, The businesses there are difficult to access and not all doing well, Parking is in paid lots uncommon in smaller towns in the Midwest, Libraries are not open on Saturday,

So, yeah, I now understand the divergent reviews, If you really want to hear some good news, and can buy the promotional talk from the boosters, you'll love the book, If you're more cynical, you're not likely to, I should've just skimmed it, and read the last chapter, Ultimately, it's really not worth it imo, I was hoping this would be Charles Kuraltesq, Traveling around American and really connecting with people, However, I'm not buying a ticket to visit any of the cities/towns or taking out my checkbook to write a check to any of the organizations that were mentioned.
It was dryly written and lacked an emotional pull, Maybe pictures would have helped me connect or fewer cities and more in depth stories about the towns and people, Not compelling. And clunky. The firstpages of this book grated on me, I felt that the authors were not being critical enough of the towns they were visiting and the reporting seemed to mostly involve going to towns and picking up the local tourism pamphlet.
And Jim kept going on and on about microbreweries,

But in time, I realized that to view this as not reporting was to miss the point of the book, The authors are showing the reader how hope and really, capital investment can help turn around towns or at least imbue the local population with a sense of hope.
It was what each of these things they were seen the attempts at incubators, the investment in microbrews and distilleries represented, And because this book was started before theelection, its reporting can seem prescient, They show readers that in places that are considered stereotypical "Trump country", people are open, thoughtful, hardworking, and like all of us, a pile of contradiction.


However, to only view this book through the lens of thewould be to do it a disservice, By the end of the book, the authors concede that everything they have thus far shown the reader is tenuous, Some of the towns they visited will have succeeded, others will have failed, But the authors have marvelously captured a moment in this nation's history, At a time where folks all around the country bemoan the noise around us, this book serves as a reminder that the solutions are often much closer to home.
And though they may not be easy, it is worthwhile to pursue them because as we all know, this country was not built overnight.
While attempting to put a pretty face on the state of America's smaller cities I doth feel that they oversimplified the forces that are acting to further separate the populace in the US.
Many of the essays relating to particular cities were encouraging but they were stretching the points about local education efforts aiding the economic rejuvenation.


I did enjoy their description of the flights and approaches to the cities, This was a great book all about many of the different towns and cities in the US, I learned a lot about how cities grow, what makes them who they are, what their strengths and weakness are and what we can learn from them all.
So I loved the Atlantic article in which Fallows lays out the argument of the book, which is probably why the book was disappointing.
And all the optimism about America I felt after reading that article is gone now because the book does not really support the thesis that American towns are doing great and are way better off than we think.
While I tend to prefer well done ethnographies and think they can often reveal more than just data, this book had neither data or deep ethnographic research.
It seems like they just flew into each town, had beer at the new fancy microbrewery and then met someone from the chamber of commerce who told them that their town was the next tech center and that their main street was totally in revival mode.
I mean, some of the towns, I buy it, but others, seems like they were drinking a lot of the koolaid from the local tourist bureaus.


Some of the things that I did like was their focus on public libraries and public pools, which end up being really important community resources.
Also, I liked their observations about immigrants and refugees and how the more a town has them the less they seem to be antiimmigrant.


The main point they made in the article is that Trump's America and the cable news hatred of immigrants is not what they saw.
However, they wrapped up their travel before the election, Seems like they might need to do a followup to see how that's changed, All those people at those Trump rallies talking about building a wall have to live in some town right Maybe they should go there Edited to fix typos because I should never ever try to write a review from my phone.


I liked the idea of the book, I even like Fallows' magazine work, This, however, grated on me,

Affluent, WASP couple flies their private plane around the country, dropping into apparently random towns, They do a meetandgreet with the mayor or town marketing person and get the latest dogandpony presentation about how the town's "revitalizing," try to blend in at the newest local coffee shop or microbrewery to get a few quotes from the proud citizens, then proceed to act like they know the town well enough to tell the rest of us what it's like there.


I've lived in enough small towns to know you don't begin to scratch the surface on understanding them until you live in them for a while.
This book started to take the tone of a salesperson who doesn't know his product that well,

but has memorized the sales brochure with its bullet points.
I've never dealt favorably with sales presentations, so this is a DNF for me, While I appreciate his effort to paint "small town America" as he defines it in a positive light, I'd appreciate it more if I thought he really knew what he was talking about.


As for "the heart of America," I question his geography, From the map included, it looks more like the perimeter of America, You'd think there was nothing except Kansas between South Dakota and Texas or Missouri to California, I guess he had to fuel up somewhere, and Kansas was it, Other than that, the middle part of the country was literally a flyover zone, .