Maybe you think this country is going to hell. Plenty of people do. But James and Deborah Fallows spent five years traveling America by single-prop airplane, visiting small and midsize cities and meeting civic leaders, factory workers, recent immigrants, and young entrepreneurs. And they came away with a more hopeful take. From Eastport, Maine, to Redlands, California, they found revival and reinvention.

James Fallows, former chief speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter, is a longtime national correspondent for The Atlantic. Deborah Fallows is a contributing writer for The Atlantic who has worked in research and polling for the Pew Internet Project and in data architecture for Oxygen Media. They offer a revelatory portrait of civic and economic renewal taking place across America, mostly out of view of the national media, in a discussion of their new book Our Towns.