Urbana, Ohio, was not a utopia when Beth Macy grew up there in the ’70s and ’80s. Her dad was known as the town drunk, which hurt, as did their poverty. But Urbana had a healthy economy and thriving schools, and Macy had middle-class schoolmates whose families became her role models. But as her mother’s health declined in 2020, she couldn’t shake the feeling that her town had dramatically hardened. Macy had grown up as the paper girl, delivering the local newspaper, which was the community’s civic glue. Now she found scant local news and precious little civic glue. This was not an assignment Macy had ever imagined taking on, but after her mother’s death, she decided to figure out what happened to Urbana in the 40 years since she’d left. The result is an astonishing book that brings into focus our most urgent set of national issues.