Our Towns

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.

JAMES FALLOWS has been a national correspondent for The Atlantic for more than thirty-five years, reporting from China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Europe, and across the United States. He is the author of eleven previous books. His work has also appeared in many other magazines and as public-radio commentaries since the 1980s. He has won a National Book Award and a National Magazine Award. For two years he was President Jimmy Carter’s chief speechwriter.

DEBORAH FALLOWS is a linguist and writer who holds a PhD in theoretical linguistics and is the author of two previous books. She has written for The Atlantic, National Geographic, Slate, The New York Times, and The Washington Monthly, and has worked at the Pew Research Center, Oxygen Media, and Georgetown University. She and her husband have two sons and five grandchildren.

Authors’ Note 

Introduction: 2017: A Last Trip West 

2013
Sioux Falls, South Dakota 
Rapid City, South Dakota 
Holland, Michigan 
Burlington, Vermont 
Eastport, Maine 

2014
Greenville, South Carolina 
St. Marys, Georgia 
Columbus, Mississippi 
Caddo Lake, Louisiana-Texas 
In the Air 
Columbus, Ohio 
Louisville, Kentucky 
Allentown, Pennsylvania 
In the Air 
Duluth, Minnesota 
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 
Charleston, West Virginia 

2015
In the Air 
Guymon, Oklahoma 
Ajo, Arizona 
San Bernardino, California 
Riverside, California 
Redlands, California 
Fresno, California 
Winters, California 
Bend, Oregon 
Redmond and Prineville, Oregon 
Chester, Montana 
The American Prairie Reserve, Montana 

2016
Dodge City, Kansas 
Garden City and Spearville, Kansas 
Erie, Pennsylvania 

What We Saw and What We Learned 
10½ Signs of Civic Success 

Afterword
 
Acknowledgments