James Fallows

Look 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 show more 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 high-end 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 question(s). 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 coffee-houses 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 additional 1% sales 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 follow-up... 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 2019, 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. show less

The authors recount their frequent small-plane flights to various small and mid-size cities across the Lower 48 (most of the places they visit can't really fairly be called towns). In each section they highlight the unique aspects of each place and how the area was coping with various pressures in the mid-2010s, finding common themes that tend to unite the success stories. They tend to downplay discord and systemic problems, and often their tales come off as a bit more optimistic and show more boostery than perhaps is warranted. (I am, to be fair, perhaps more jaded than the ideal reader for this book).

I'd be curious to read about some of the places they mention in passing that didn't seem to be doing as well, for example. But there is a lot of interesting content here, anyway, and the book gives a good sense of how some cities are finding imaginative ways to thrive. show less

China's meteoric ascent from the crippling poverty of the Mao era to its current status as a still-poor but fast-growing major power is one of the major success stories of human history. Aerospace is one industry that symbolizes China's aspirations towards first-world status as well as illuminates its shortcomings, and James Fallows, whose excellent 2010 essay collection Postcards From Tomorrow Square presented many fascinating details from China's "controlled, yet chaotic" headlong pursuit show more of growth, is well-positioned to report on what China's attempts to cultivate a homegrown aerospace industry might mean for itself and for the world. It's difficult for Americans, most of who have never known a world where we haven't been #1 in the categories that matter, to imagine what it was like during an era comparable to where China is today. Even during our own similar period of growth in the 19th century, we were not as poor, in many ways, as much of China is now, and even during the second half of that century, when Chicago was the fastest-growing city in the world, we didn't come close to the massive movements of human beings, material goods, and capital that China has experienced for decades now. Though China is of course building many rail lines and highways to cope with the gigantic annual flows of people within its borders, it's also extremely interested in air travel as a partial solution to this and other issues. And so, as Fallows forthrightly admits, while it's impossible to really convey the scope of what's happening there, one example that comes within range of being comprehensible is their attempt to create the foundation for the kind of aerospace industry that would be familiar to Americans.

It's much more difficult than it seems. First, some statistics: Air China's market capitalization is $19 billion, more than most of the largest US airlines combined, and along with China Southern and China Eastern, China has 3 of the 4 most valuable airlines in the world. In its most recent Five Year Plan, it plans to buy 4,500 new airplanes, which is half of all new planes sold in the world over that timeframe. Beijing's airport, already the world's second-largest with 74 million passengers in 2010, is growing in traffic at 10% a year. In terms of cargo, Hong Kong and Shanghai are #1 and #3, respectively, and each is still growing at 20% a year. And this is with an air infrastructure that is shockingly primitive in many ways. China has only 175 airports, less than a fifth of the US number, and even though as part of China's attempt to race its way to world competitiveness it's embarking on a massive construction boom, developing a mature culture of airline travel is much more complicated than simply building a bunch of new megaprojects, and here is where Fallows makes many good points on the changes that China will have to undergo before it has either a domestic air travel market that's as safe, reliable, and convenient as the US, or an aerospace industry that will be able to compete in international markets with the likes of Boeing or Airbus. You can build a bunch of airports, but what about training air traffic controllers? You can build planes, but what if they have such poor reputations for safety that no one wants to buy or fly them? You can advertise cheap tickets to your new airports, but what if your Air Force has a habit of shutting down civilian airspace at will for no reason? As Fallows related, it's clear that in order to have a first-world aerospace industry, China in many ways needs a first-world culture.

To back that contention up and provide more details on the many facets of this transformation, Fallows conducts many interviews with people who are involved in its various stages, from entrepreneurs to engineers to enthusiasts. There are many interesting historical details (I had no idea that Wong Tsu, the first chief engineer at Boeing who also designed the Model C, its first plane, was Chinese), along with a lot of context. To continue the 21st century China-19th century America analogy, China wants to make a similar move up the "smiley curve" - so-called because if you draw a graph of the profit added at each stage of a product's life, the highest profit is at the two ends during the design/concept stage and the retail/sale stage, not the manufacturing/production stage in the middle - which will involve not just the familiar slow accumulation of talents and skills, but also a complete change in the way the various levels of the Chinese government do business. Currently, the Chinese government is respected for the way it has managed the country's growth over the years, but it's still arbitrary, capricious, corrupt, nepotistic, secretive, and in many ways completely unsuited to managing an aerospace sector. People simply won't fly if, in the future, an aircraft inspector is punished for exposing the flaws in a politically-powerful manufacturer's craft, and getting to that point, where China is able to truly compete with Boeing and Airbus without simply copying or stealing their designs, will require a lot of subtle but profound changes in the way the Chinese government does business. There are many interesting facts and figures in the book, but possibly my favorite moment was when an Iranian-Canadian pilot was showing a Chinese official the strengths of the American aviation market by flying him around the Statue of Liberty. It will be a long time until the Chinese government is accountable, transparent, or respects the rule of law enough to get to that point, but it will be a fascinating journey (insert the obligatory "the sky's the limit" joke), and Fallows makes an excellent guide. show less

My main takeaway from this book is that anyone who tries to generalize about China doesn't know what they're talking about, and indeed can't know what they're talking about. I feel comfortable making that generalization about generalizers because China is just so big, so complex, and changing so fast that attempts to summarize what's happening there not only inevitably obscure the facts, but are also out-of-date nearly as soon as they're printed. Superlatives evaporate as soon as they leap show more off the tongue. Fallows knows all this, which is why his modestly titled "postcards" (which are mostly articles first published in The Atlantic) emphasize detail and nuance more than anything else. I've considered Fallows one of my favorite journalists for a long time, based not only on his avuncular tone and thoughtful analysis, but also his attention to detail and ability to find context and larger trends without falling into the overgeneralizing trap I complained about before.

As China becomes more integrated into the world economy, its quirks - its intolerance of dissent and criticism, its rocky relationships with its neighbors, its struggle with environmental issues, and its almost unbelievably rapid yet uneven growth - will become more relevant than simple domestic election-year attack lines, but in order to figure out what to do about China (if indeed there is anything to be "done" about it), you have to figure out what's actually going on there. Fallows reports on a number of people or incidents that he believes to be fairly representative of the new China: entrepreneur-tycoons in Changsha, factories in Shenzen, reality TV shows in Beijing, gambling in Macau, censorship on the Internet, and above all the sense of dynamism and change all over the place in what is still in some ways a very rigid country. For the majority of recorded history China has been one of the largest economies in the world, and its recent history of poverty and playing catch-up is actually fairly unusual. The Chinese government has, after decades of purges and repressions, famines and revolutions, decided to do what it can to facilitate China's return to global promise and the results, as chronicled here, find parallel only in the wildest days of the American experience.

Last year I read a number of books about the 19th century United States, and I frequently found myself mentally comparing some of the places and people in this book to the more familiar denizens of New York and Chicago, though of course on a much larger scale - Guangdong province alone has more factory workers than all of America. The fact that the Chinese people are going through their Bridge of Sighs and Hell's Kitchen phase in the age of YouTube and netbooks is extremely interesting to me, and when I was done with this book I gained a valuable new perspective on all of the articles about currency manipulation and newly-minted billionaires cluttering up my inbox every day. Just imagine, Jurgis Rudkus and Horatio Alger and Tom Joad and hundreds of millions of others hustling by the shores of the Yangtze and the Huang He and the Pearl, building tomorrow with yesterday's tools... what will historians 50 years hence be writing about? I think Fallows gives a couple of good answers to that question. His wife, Deborah Fallows, has written a book about learning the Chinese language which is also on my to-read list, but the wide range of the country covered here has put a ton of other books on my radar. So much to read, so little time.... show less