From 2013 to 2017, James and Deborah Fallows traveled across America in a single-engine prop airplane. Visiting dozens of towns, they have met hundreds of civic leaders, workers, immigrants, educators, environmentalists, artists, public servants, librarians, business people, city planners, students and entrepreneurs.

Their fascinating view of the country, presented in their book, Our Towns (Vintage Books), is as complex and contradictory as America itself.

“An illuminating trip through ‘parts of the country generally missed by the media spotlight.’… A well-reported, optimistic portrait of America’s future.”
—Kirkus Reviews

James Fallows is a National Book Award winner and has been a national correspondent for The Atlantic for more than 35 years.

Deborah Fallows is a linguist and writer who holds a PhD in theoretical linguistics and is the author of two previous books.

Singer-songwriter Bailey Bigger is a Marion, Arkansas, native now based in Memphis. Her latest release is the 5-song EP Closer to Home (Blue Tom Records). Her song “Wildflower” won the Memphis Songwriters Association's “Memphis Best Song of the Year” in 2017. She is currently working on a second EP slated for release in April.

Singer-songwriter Doug Seegers was a homeless street musician in Nashville in 2014 when fate intervened. A Swedish documentary crew filmed Seegers singing his composition Going Down to the River, and after the footage aired in Sweden, the song raced to the top of the Swedish iTunes charts. An album of the same name produced by Will Kimbrough went gold, and suddenly Seegers was booked for a Swedish tour of 70 venues, beginning an improbable late-life career.

Seegers wrote a book (with Steve Eubanks) about his life on the street, Going Down to the River (Thomas Nelson), which unflinchingly describes his battle with addiction, searching for food from dumpsters and living under a bridge. His debut solo album, A Story I Got to Tell, will be released worldwide this spring on the BMG label.