Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America

***NATIONAL BEST SELLER***

A vivid, surprising portrait of the civic and economic reinvention taking place in America, town by town and generally out of view of the national media. A realistically positive and provocative view of the country between its coasts.

For the last five years, James and Deborah Fallows have been traveling across America in a single-engine prop airplane. Visiting dozens of towns, they have met hundreds of civic leaders, workers, immigrants, educators, environmentalists, artists, public servants, librarians, business people, city planners, students, and entrepreneurs to take the pulse and understand the prospects of places that usually draw notice only after a disaster or during a political campaign.

The America they saw is acutely conscious of its problems—from economic dislocation to the opioid scourge—but itis 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.

• The New Localism: How Cities Can Thrive in the Age of Populism
• The Next American City: The Big Promise of Our Midsize Metros
• The Source: How Rivers Made America and America Remade Its Rivers
• The Efficiency Paradox: What Big Data Can't Do
• The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
• Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World_and Why Things Are Better Than You Think
• Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals
• Educated: A Memoir
• The Fifth Risk
• Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth