A solidly useful book. Written by a newspaper man it reads well, informative enough to teach you a new way of thinking about America but not so completely dry that bores you to tears. The writting is engaging and descriptive.
As the title suggests the author considers America from the perspective of cultural similarities as opposed to state and national lines which are mostly arbitrary...
more A solidly useful book. Written by a newspaper man it reads well, informative enough to teach you a new way of thinking about America but not so completely dry that bores you to tears. The writting is engaging and descriptive.
As the title suggests the author considers America from the perspective of cultural similarities as opposed to state and national lines which are mostly arbitrary anyway.
The first nation he talks about is New England. New England as he sees it is the Northern East Coast. The oldest of the states, they consider themselves the only true civilized people in America. Essentially the place is all snobbery and idiocy. The people there refuse to build anything there like power plants to supply themselves with electricity because it would spoil their priceless view, which to be fair, the authors states is fairly spectacular (I wouldn't know I have never been). Still, the cold makes the place not all that great for farming, it doesn't seem to have many natural resources to fall back on, not that they would allow their vistas to be spoiled by such industry anyway means the this place of 'civilization' is completely dependent on the other nations for their wants.
The next nation he discusses is The Foundry. I write this from Baltimore which is where he opens the chapter, so this was the segment I was most interested in. The Foundry is the traditional home of the heavy industry, like steel mills and such. It stretches from below the New England nation down to Northern VA and inward to just after lake Michigan. It includes all the cities you would think of if you thought heavy industry Pittsburgh (the Steelers), Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, etc. Anyways the Foundry is the historic home of such industry. The problem is the industry is moving away. Either being outsourced to other countries or plants having moved their operations closer to the source of this or that other plant. In a word the foundry is rusting and dying. People are following the jobs, which are moving south and the foundry needs to wake up and figure out what it is going to do in the future. Personally I found this rather heartbreaking and almost didn't keep reading.
The nest little bit he spends talking about places which are really not part of any nation because they are their own thing. Such places are like New York City and Washington D.C., and Alaska and Hawaii to a lesser extent. The New York City aberration does not include the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, or Harlem, those are all deeply ingrained Foundry. Alaska likes to take pride in being its won thing but is really one of the other nations he gets to later, and Hawaii he says is as much an Asian aberration as it is a North American one.
Dixie is next, it stretches from the base of the Foundry all the way down to the all but the very tip of Florida and inwards to about Houston, forming an arc back to the coast touching St. Louis. Dixie is one of the places all the jobs from the Foundry are going for lower wages. The wages paid in Dixie go a lot farther than they do up north so no one is complaining. Dixie is also the place international companies are going to get in on the American market. Dixie is growing fast and has embraced the mobile home as its housing of choice for all its new inhabitants. Interestingly enough all this growth has been helped rather than impeded by EPA regulations. Dixie politicians tell companies: 'yeah you have to meet these requirements but you should come here because we don't put any additional restrictions up, unlike other parts of the country.' Perhaps one of the biggest misconceptions is that the south is still poor, stupid, and rural. Dixie is growing and these things are not nearly as true as they used to be and are continuing to change.
The next nation is the Islands which is the southern tip of Florida and all of the islands in the caribean. You can sum up the islands with the word Drugs. Everything is bought with drug money and everyone but the law men (and even a number of those guys) are in on it and there is no way to stop it.
Mexamerica follows which is Mexico and the area America killed the Mexicans for to make it part of America. Mexamerica is therefore full of people who have historically been Mexican which contributes to the general outlook on life as long suffering which contrasts the Anglo view of if the environment isn't just as you want it, alter it to fit your needs. Mexamerica population centers are products of the internal combustion engine which allows the speedy ferrying of goods to them and modern plumbing which transports the scarce water from all around to slake their people's first. In fact water is one of the principle concerns of the mexamerican citizen. Nothing is done without first thinking of where the water was going to come from for the project. The border between the US and Mexico is a joke with Mexican citizens allowed to leave for America and come back without a passport. The author speaks to how many Americans believe that all the benefits about illegals into the country goes to Mexico but this is not actually true. He notes that illegals not only work for lower wages than any other group in this country would be willing to take but the idea that they are draining the economy with welfare is false as well since many of the workers not only leave their families behind to be bread winners here and send the money back to them but the overwhelming majority have FICA taken out of their paychecks before they get them jsut like everyone else. They also don't particularly like living here and would much rather be back in Mexico. The author continues that the people that the more hardliners on securing the Mexican border are the people who know the least about the situation. There is another bit about how the real border is something like 75 miles inland from the stated Mexican American border where there is a lot of investment by more international companies looking to cash in on the Spanish speaking market that is also the site of a great deal of US investment money that ships goods to the US after taking advantage of dirt cheap wages which I would explain in more detail but I can't find the section and am too lazy to spend all that long looking for it.
On to Ecotopia. Ecotopia hugs the coast from northern California up along the edge of Alaska. Ecotopia is the land of deep woods where conservation and recycling is the name of the game. Essentially Ecotopia is the land of Hippies and Environmentalists. They are gifted with an abundance of renewable resources so they don't need to rely on other nations to supply them with much. That is about all I have to say about Ecotopia. It is beautiful out there, so sayeth the author and I agree.
I am tired of writing this review so I am going to super summarize.
The Empty Quarter is a nation that traces the outter edges of the West coast nations and explodes upwards. The Empty Quarter is where the population is super thin. It is the land where at any point of civilization it'll be something like 400 miles to the next major population center.
Moving briskly on the Breadbasket is exactly what is sounds like. It is where we grow everything. Problem being that a lot of people want to farm there but because there is such high demand the property prices are incredibly high, leading to less and less profit for the actual farmer if you can even call it that in the first place. A pittance is really what it is, just enough to keep them alive and farming. The author goes into how in America a farmer is on his own trying to get the best sales price for his goods on the open market and follows the market closely to take advantage of the least hike in prices to sell. In Canada they created a government board which buys it all from the farmers at a flat rate so that people don't get completley shafted.
Last is Quebec which has this whole separatist history and of course is the source of the French speaking Canadian everything. Interesting to note but not particularly relevant to the US other than it has this huge self sufficiency streak which hay leas to it supply the power for places like New York City which are power guzzlers.
The one real criticism of this book which is by and large awesome, informative, and interesting is that it is super dated. It was written in 1980 and as such all of his numbers are out of date. What I would really like to see is the author come back at this idea today and comment on what turned out from his predictions and what didn't, perhaps why. Revise the lines of the nations to reflect the changes and offer more predictions and trends to watch out for.
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