Word: hagstrom
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...BOOK OF AMERICA: INSIDE 50 STATES TODAY by Neal R. Peirce and Jerry Hagstrom; Norton; 910 pages...
...small comment on the present that it now takes two journalists to do what one John Gunther did some 40 years ago in Inside U.S.A. Gunther's book is clearly the model for Neal Peirce and Jerry Hagstrom's Bunyanesque effort to package the long-and shortcomings of each state in one readable volume. Peirce, a syndicated columnist, and Hagstrom, both editors of the Government affairs weekly National Journal, offer a mint of trivia: the country's longest front porch is at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Mich.; Georgia leads in poultry production; Louisiana is first...
...give substance and shape to the world's most protean political and cultural organism. The standardization of urban skylines, the mailing of the suburbs and monotoning of news barely begin to smooth out the stubborn differences that define each region of the country. Pennsylvanian Peirce and North Dakotan Hagstrom count eight discrete sections: Mid-Atlantic, New England, Great Lakes, Border South, Deep South, Great Plains, Mountain, and Pacific, which includes Alaska, an area so large that it embraces four time zones...
...levies on real estate but receive substandard public services in return. The state's motto, "Live Free or Die," may have a brave historical ring but makes little fiscal sense. The origins of good leadership, or the lack of it, are as varied as the states. Peirce and Hagstrom suggest that Missouri's skeptical show-me spirit accounts for the caliber of such men as Harry Truman, Clark Clifford and Stuart Symington. Residents of New Jersey have never registered much interest in local government, mainly because most of the state's population lives under the professional...
...would be convenient to conclude that Peirce and Hagstrom have assembled a portrait of a middle-aged U.S., its seas a little less shining, the waves of grain ringed by bald patches of subdivisions, the once purple mountains now mauve with smog. But the country does not age evenly. Alaska is barely in its adolescence; high tech has given sagging Massachusetts a facelift, and much of the South is having a rebirth. North Carolina is now tenth in population with the highest percentage of workers employed by industry. Unfortunately, there are signs of sclerosis in the heartland. "Sadly...