In Stephen King's book "11/22/63", the flashback version of small town America is much more interesting than the presence when protagonist Jake Eppings alias George Amberson time-travels between current time and the early sixties. When Eppings becomes Amberson, his hometown Lisbon, ME morphs from a place way past its best days into a lovely place in full bloom, including a soda fountain, a smelly, noisy and smoky mill and a host of stores selling everyday goods. Is King simply nostalgic or are the best days of small town America really over?
Canadian author and journalist Charles Montgomery located ground zero of happiness in today's American small town, somewhere between Maple and Main Street in his recently published book "Happy Cities". To do this he enlisted neuroscience and environmental psychology.