Our Towns
A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America
Lavin Exclusive Speaker
Writer Deborah Fallows has turned her careful observations and beautiful prose to the small towns and industries that shape the United States. In her New York Times bestseller Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America, Fallows documents a five-year journey across the country, profiling the grassroots re-invention rarely covered in the mainstream media.
Our Towns is already a national bestseller and getting rave reviews: “an eye-opening, keenly optimistic reminder of the strength of America’s vital center,” says Publishers Weekly. “An illuminating trip through parts of the country generally missed by the media spotlight … writing with lively curiosity and open minds, the couple have created a well-reported, optimistic portrait of America’s future.” (Kirkus Reviews). The America that Deb and James Fallows spent five years reporting on is one on the verge of reinvention, and the keynotes they share are uplifting, fascinating portraits of the country’s strong backbone.
Fallows sharpened her reporting stills while writing Dreaming in Chinese, a book O Magazine called “captivating.” Her approach to studying China allowed her to understand many of the idiosyncrasies that confound the West when interacting with the Chinese. As the New York Times Sunday Book Review says, “Fallows presents the common Chinese viewpoint,” adding that she “sticks to her own experiences and observations, which make her book all the more valuable.”
A Harvard graduate with a PhD in Linguistics, Fallows is also the author of A Mother’s Work, which deals with child-rearing in the working-mom age. She most recently worked in research and polling for the Pew Internet Project. Fallows’s writing on women, education, work, and travel has appeared in, among others, The Atlantic Monthly, National Geographic, and Newsweek.