2) Heartland: Looking into America’s Future
The interior United States is in the midst of a tectonic shift–in economy, demographics, culture, and politics. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Midwest, the most American place. Towns have disappeared, along with jobs and people. This talk focuses on the changes which have occurred in the Midwest in the last quarter-century, then attempts to answer the question: What will the region–and, by extrapolation, the non-coastal United States–look like in forty years?
3) Nothing Is Lost: Ruminations on the Job of Being a Writer
Writing is unlike most jobs in that there is no blueprint, no road map delineating the different paths to success–or failure. In this humorous and engaging tour through the opaque world of American publishing, Nick tells the story of how a chance incident in Chilean Patagonia in 1998 led to publishing two books about immensely different subjects. In the end, the best–and only–advice for any would-be writer or journalist is, in the words of Henry James: Be someone upon whom nothing is lost.
