Is the view from “out there” in America as bleak as our pundits and politicos keep telling us it is? Deborah and James Fallows — who have spent the past five years traveling the interior of America from South Dakota to South Carolina and dozens of points in between — say no. Their new best-selling book, Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America, argues that a local-level wave of renewal and re-engagement is already underway. The crucial political question, they say, is how and when this positive version of the country’s future will inform our national debate.