From City Journal, Victor Davis Hanson on the oldest divide: With roots dating back to our Founding, America’s urban-rural split is wider than ever; and cities and memory: Englishman Theodore Dalrymple reflects on his travels in urban America. Erik Loomis reviews Americans Against the City: Anti-Urbanism in the Twentieth Century by Steven Conn. A very bad sign for all but America’s biggest cities: Americans in small counties are much less likely to start new businesses, a trend that jeopardizes the economic future of vast swaths of the country. Fetishizing family farms: History is nothing like the political mythology. “Normal America” is not a small town of white people (and more). The real reason Middle America should be angry: Like many “flyover” cities, St. Louis’s decline is not mainly a story of deindustrialization, but of decisions in Washington that opened the door to predatory monopoly. Southern cities split with states on social issues.
The last homesteads: The arid landscape of the Great Plains is home to generations of pioneer homesteaders — and the ruins they left behind. Jenny Rowland on how the American West is rapidly disappearing. Breaking out: Alexis Coe is rolling through the West in search of the American dream. A French communist utopia in Texas: Chris Jennings on how one group's search for the promised land in 1848 became a complete disaster. Kirk David Swinehart reviews Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism by Chris Jennings. Scott Porch on 5 quirky utopians who tried building a more perfect America.
