America’s conversation about its shared economy, politics and culture doesn’t have to be divisive. The starting point for a new kind of dialogue is a truthful reckoning with our past, from thousands of years ago, through 20th century boom and sticky bust, to the present of the gas economy and service jobs, and to the wild, open-ended future. By telling the biography of a classic American town — Moundsville, WV, pop. 8,000 — that has all these important elements, in the words of the most thoughtful people we found in a year of traveling there, we hope to lay at least one brick in the foundation for this new kind of conversation. 
