New Releases by Deborah Fallows

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "James and Deborah Fallows have always moved to where history is being made.... They have an excellent sense of where world-shaping events are taking place at any moment" —The New York Times • The basis for the HBO documentary streaming on HBO Max For five years, James and Deborah Fallows have travelled across America in a single-engine prop airplane. Visiting dozens of towns, the America they saw is acutely conscious of its problems—from economic dislocation to the opioid scourge—but it is 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.

Deborah Fallows has spent a lot of her life learning languages and traveling around the world. But nothing prepared her for the surprises of learning Mandarin, China''s most common language, or the intensity of living in Shanghai and Beijing. Over time, she realized that her struggles and triumphs in studying learning the language of her adopted home provided small clues to deciphering behavior and habits of its people, and its culture''s conundrums. As her skill with Mandarin increased, bits of the language - a word, a phrase, an oddity of grammar - became windows into understanding romance, humor, protocol, relationships, and the overflowing humanity of modern China. Fallows learned, for example, that the abrupt, blunt way of speaking which Chinese people sometimes use isn''t rudeness, but is, in fact a way to acknowledge and honor the closeness between two friends. She learned that English speakers'' trouble with hearing or saying tones-the variations in inflection that can change a word''s meaning-is matched by Chinese speakers'' inability not to hear tones, or to even take a guess at understanding what might have been meant when foreigners misuse them. Dreaming in Chinese is the story of what Deborah Fallows discovered about the Chinese language, and how that helped her make sense of what had at first seemed like the chaos and contradiction of everyday life in China.

Over 80% of Chinese survey respondents say they think the internet should be managed or controlled, and in 2007, almost 85% say they think the government should be responsible for doing it.

This August 2008 report states that "Almost half of all internet users now use search engines on a typical day."

This February 2007 report finds that "during the autumn 2006 campaign and election season, Americans flocked in record numbers to their favorite media sources for political news. When asked why they preferred one medium over the others, consumers all pointed to convenience of use and unbiased presentation of information in their favorite medium, whether they preferred TV, newspapers, or the internet."

This July 2007 report examines the growing number of Chinese internet users and assesses the impact of their participation on their own countries and in a global perspective.

This March 2004 report finds that "the CAN-SPAM act has not helped most email users so far. Disillusionment is growing as 29% of email users say they are using email less because of SPAM."

This December 2002 report finds that "email earns high marks in the workplace as a tool of communication, an aid in many work tasks, a facilitator of good working relationships, and even a source of pleasure and fun in the workplace."