Jim and Deb Fallows fly their lovely tiny airplane around the USA looking a towns that seem to be on the move up, trying to understand why they are moving up. There is a sameness to these bootstrap stories and something too Pollyanna for me, a kind of secular Prosperity Gospel. At some core level I do not believe that we can think ourselves or our towns out of dismal straits. ( )

Flying around the country in a small plane with your best friend and partner and then writing a book about it? Couple goals!

It was nice to be reminded of the American can-do attitude and the work that is happening in parts of the country to renew themselves. I miss reading about the America of innovators and small businesses. I would like more, please.

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Just sad that this book hasn't lived up to my expectations. But it does have some redeeming factors.

First the bad: I agree with other reviewers that it is pretentious and elitist writing from an east-coast standpoint. The authors shouldn't be so surprised to discover things like libraries in these places, or so quick to apply their own definitions to terms that obviously mean different things to different people. For a journalist and a linguist, they really don't write very well....or maybe they just needed a good editor. It was annoying for them to discuss a problem for several paragraphs, then never tell us what the local solution was. I also wonder if maybe organizing the book by "solutions" and making it shorter rather than by "city/trip" would have made it more readable. Finally, these are not "towns." With an average population of over 146,000, the places the Fallows visit are clearly cities. And they really don't focus on much more than economic problems and city revitalization.

The good: city or town planners will probably find some good ideas here that they might be able to apply to their situations. If you are concerned about revitalizing your community or trying to solve some local economic problems, you might find some good suggestions here, but pick one chapter and their final suggestions and skip the rest of the book. ( )

nonfiction by husband-wife journalist team traveling to small towns across the US in a little private plane.
read to page 48. I think I was hoping this would be more like [a:Studs Terkel|33716|Studs Terkel|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1445205508p2/33716.jpg]'s extensive collections of oral histories, but it was more like two people writing about their hobby, finding places to visit and talking about economic growth with whomever they thought were significant local figures (mayors, major business owners and contributors) as well as the staff they met at the restaurants and inns and odd passersby. Snippets of conversations are paraphrased and reduced into overarching themes for each location. ( )

Having recently moved from a small town (Brunswick, ME, pop. about 20,000) to a really small town (Luck, WI, pop. about 1100), I was interested in this book both for its hopeful attitude and what it might say about small towns. Many of the "small" towns were actually more like small cities (the largest, Columbus, OH, and I think there was only one town under 1000), and their problems and opportunities were different from the places I've been living recently.

There are many thoughtful reviews here, some from residents of the very towns examined in the book. (More than one mentions the ubiquity of visits to craft breweries, which do get a little tedious!) Still, I enjoyed dipping into the book and being reminded that there are a lot of people who like the place they live in and want to see it get better. The Fallowses may have had on rose-colored beer goggles on their odyssey, but I think there is still truth in their vision of America and Americans.
Recommended. ( )