Life 2.0: How People Across the Country Are Transforming Their Lives to Make Their Own American Dream

by Rich Karlgaard, Rick Warren (Foreword)

“A delightful, and surprisingly moving, tale” -- Michael Lewis, bestselling author of Moneyball“Karlgaard flies in with a companion concept to David Brooks’s On Paradise Drive” -- Tom Wolfe“While counterintuitive to those on the conventional fast-track, Life 2.0 offers great promise to those who are open to personal innovation” -- Clayton Christensen, Professor, Harvard Business School “This fascinating treatise will make you think deeply, and may just give you the impetus to uproot” -- Tom Peters“An original and exhilarating look at options many Americans don’t realize are now open to them.” -- James Fallows, national correspondent, The Atlantic Monthly “Not only will it widen the horizons of your life, it could also renew your health and wealth.” -- George GilderHave You Found the Where of Your Happiness?One of the intriguing things about the United States is the idea of the second chance, that when you feel stuck there is always a frontier you can cross to reinvent yourself. In Life 2.0, Rich Karlgaard used his own personal and professional midlife crises to look at the state of the American dream—the belief in continuous personal upward mobility—and where it stands in the twenty-first century. At the ripe old age of forty-five, Karlgaard fell in love with flying and mastered the art of lifting up and bringing down a “2,500-pound aluminum box kite”—a four-seat single-engine airplane. As the publisher of Forbes he felt that he was doing too much armchair theorizing and didn’t really understand how Americans were responding to the changes that had started taking place so swiftly over the past few years.So he put together his new flying skills and reportorial mission and flew around America to places like Green Bay, Wisconsin; Bozeman, Montana; Fargo, North Dakota; Des Moines, Iowa; and Lake Placid, New York, to gain some insight into how ordinary Americans are untangling the knotty problems of constant stress, crushing expense, and bewildering hassle that often characterize life in the nation’s urban centers.He discovered their simple they moved. What Karlgaard found on the road are fascinating and inspiring stories about people— those with a nose for entrepreneurship, a faith in technology, and the willingness to take a chance—who are finding the new American dream in places as far from New York City and Silicon Valley as you can imagine. Some of those people • A burned-out insurance exec who fled his overworked East Coast life and settled in tranquil (yet dynamic) Des Moines• A tool broker who traded his brick-and-mortar business in sunny California for a life in the Pennsylvania hills, where he relaunched his business on the Internet• A road-warrior democracy specialist who conducts her worldly affairs from the low-key outpost of Bismarck, North Dakota• A self-made millionaire who paid for his financial success with his first marriage and who did things differently the second time around by moving to smaller cities and focusing on family as well as workAdroitly combining analysis of the economic and social trends challenging middle-class people with perceptive advice on how to escape the rat race of the coasts, Karlgaard explores the eye-opening possibilities of that huge tract of land often carelessly dubbed “flyover country.” Filled with stories of personal reinvention and triumph, Life 2.

Genres: Cultural

384 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Alison]

I only made it a chapter or so into this book. It's just not at all was I had expected (and hoped for). I was hoping for something that would give someone (i.e. me) who might be thinking of relocating, things to think about in deciding where the "perfect" place for them may be. Maybe a comparison of city living, suburbs, small towns, etc. with some suggestions thrown in. I of course expected some stories of people who have relocated by choice, and was fine with that, but just by the profiles given in Chapter 1 it was clear that pretty much everyone in the book was a high-profile exec or big earner of some sort, who chose to leave city life for a small(er) town. I was still planning on sticking with this, as some of the societal obserations and commentary were interesting, but then the author started the next chapter with a several page description of the flight he flew when starting his research. This was following his disclaimer that "some people might think there is too much flying talk in this book, feel free to skip those parts." Well, quite frankly I wasn't interested enough in the other parts to weed through, so I just decided to give it up. I'm so glad I got it from the library. Now if I can only find something more along the lines of what I was looking for in the first place....

[Daniel]

This book was a surprise. It was originally recommended for my wife to read as we were seeking what was next in our lives. This is delightful and worthwhile, especially if you are tired of where you are at and are wondering what lies over the next hill.

[Kathleen Riley-Daniels]

I ignored my basic rule about lifestyle / happiness / money books and looked at one from prior to the crash of 2008.

During the "pie-in-the-sky" time frame, this book would have had some merit. Now that the world is a vastly different place, that is no longer the case.

Lots of take your money and relocate to smaller locales and become penultimate consumers. If you are a high-buck exec, this book may still apply, but not applicable to average people -- then or now.

If we had a time machine and could travel back to 2004, I might give this one or two more stars, of course we don't have that so it gets one.

[Jimmy Lee]

A nice quick read that describes the best places to live in the U.S. that are not in the big cities.

[Emily]

Okay, aside from some critiques on amazon, i am interested to see what the GRs community says about this one...

[Sleighsgame]

Interesting information about some locations, but the story that loosely held together the info was BORING.

[Lori Grant]

An optional-read book on life management in self development for knowledge workers, managers, executives, and entrepreneurs.