James Fallows

The Power of Where presents the visionary concepts of Jack Dangermond, cofounder of Esri®, the world’s leading mapping software company. With a foreword by bestselling author and writer for The Atlantic, James Fallows, it’s filled with the latest web maps, illustrations, and real-life stories from a vibrant global community of geographic information systems (GIS) users. If you’ve never heard of GIS, this is the book for you, and if you think you know what GIS is, you’ll discover much more. From the Ring of Fire to the Fertile Crescent, The Power of Where takes us on a visual and narrative journey into the world of modern GIS and reveals its growing potential to address humanity’s big challenges. The technology is already ubiquitous, from running city governments and performing civic science to conserving open spaces and managing logistics—virtually every human endeavor. Central to the book is the geographic approach—a way of solving problems that uses spatial location to perceive and understand patterns—from wildlife migration and rising seas to urban planning and food production. Drawing from 60 years of research and experience, the author writes from a fervent conviction that through this approach, we can confront climate change, hunger, water scarcity, inequity, and issues large and small in our everyday lives. The book describes the methods of the geographic approach—visualization, communication, analysis, collaboration, accounting, and design—and shows how vast amounts of integrated data are propelling spatial applications into the mainstream. A companion website brings interactive maps and stories to life and serves as a starting point for students and educators—and anyone considering joining the GIS user community. The Power of Where reveals how technologies such as web services, mobile devices, artificial intelligence, extended reality, and 3D visualization intersect with GIS and outlines the new opportunities they are creating. Its maps and stories arise from a passion for the power of place and from the mutually reinforcing revolutions in Earth observation, analysis, and collaboration that GIS and the human spirit make possible. Explore live examples from the book and learn more about interactive mapping and the tools of modern GIS at powerofwhere.com.

***NATIONAL BEST SELLER*** A vivid, surprising portrait of the civic and economic reinvention taking place in America, town by town and generally out of view of the national media. A realistically positive and provocative view of the country between its coasts. For the last five years, James and Deborah Fallows have been traveling 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 to take the pulse and understand the prospects of places that usually draw notice only after a disaster or during a political campaign. The America they saw is acutely conscious of its problems--from economic dislocation to the opioid scourge--but itis 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.

"Americans need not be hostile toward China's rise, but they should be wary about its eventual effects. The United States is the only nation with the scale and power to try to set the terms of its interaction with China rather than just succumb. So starting now, Americans need to consider the economic, environmental, political, and social goals they care about defending as Chinese influence grows." --from "China Makes, the World Takes" Since December 2006, The Atlantic Magazine's James Fallows has been writing some of the most discerning accounts of the economic and political transformation occurring in China. The ten essays collected here cover a wide-range of topics: from visionary tycoons and TV-battling entrepreneurs, to environmental pollution and how China subsidizes our economy. Fallows expertly and lucidly explains the economic, political, social, and cultural forces at work turning China into a world superpower at breakneck speed. This eye-opening and cautionary account is essential reading for all concerned not only with China's but America's future role in the world.

A detailed critique of the Bush administration's role in the war in Iraq exposes the numerous failures of planning and execution, as well as the botched policies of the occupation, in a volume that collects a series of insightful articles originally written for The Atlantic Monthly and includes interviews with participants and an analysis of the current status in the U. S. and the Mideast. Original.

The troubles of the airline system have become acute in the post-terrorist era. As the average cost of a flight has come down in the last twenty years, the airlines have survived by keeping planes full and funneling traffic through a centralized hub-and-spoke routing system. Virtually all of the technological innovation in airplanes in the last thirty years has been devoted to moving passengers more efficiently between major hubs. But what was left out of this equation was the convenience and flexibility of the average traveller. Now, because of heightened security, hours of waiting are tacked onto each trip. As James Fallows vividly explains, a technological revolution is under way that will relieve this problem. Free Flight features the stories of three groups who are inventing and building the future of all air travel: NASA, Cirrus Design in Duluth, Minnesota, and Eclipse Aviation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. These ventures should make it possible for more people to travel the way corporate executives have for years: in small jet planes, from the airport that's closest to their home or office directly to the airport closest to where they really want to go. This will be possible because of a product now missing from the vast array of flying devices: small, radically inexpensive jet planes, as different from airliners as personal computers are from mainframes. And, as Fallows explains in a new preface, a system that avoids the congestion of the overloaded hub system will offer advantages in speed, convenience, and especially security in the new environment of air travel.

Why do Americans mistrust the news media? It may be because show like "The McLaughlin Group" reduce participating journalists to so many shouting heads. Or because, increasingly, the profession treats issues as complex as health-care reform and foreign policy as exercises in political gamesmanship. These are just a few of the arguments that have made Breaking the News so controversial and so widely acclaimed. Drawing on his own experience as a National Book Award-winning journalist--and on the gaffes of colleagues from George Will to Cokie Roberts--Fallows shows why the media have not only lost our respect but alienated us from our public life. "Important and lucid... It moves smartly beyond the usual attacks on sensationalism and bias to the more profound problems in modern American journalism...dead-on."--Newsweek

In a timely, even prophetic, portrait of Asia's rise and the magnitude of its challenge to the West, Fallows demolishes the myth that Japan is a capitalist country built on the Western model. He demonstrates instead how Japan's economic system treats business as an instrument of national interest while casting aside the traditional Western values of individual enterprise and human rights.