After living for twenty years in a picture-book New England town envied for its autumn maples and Currier-and-Ives snowfalls, Terry Pindell sensed something missing in his community and set out to find it.

A Good Place to Live is his exploration of place and community in a nation where people have never stopped moving in their efforts to discover and create the two. Pindell embarks on the journey we all would like to take, identifying sixteen of his favorite places and speaking with fellow migrants and city planners about creating a good place to live.

He looks at the void so common in Anyplace, U.S.A. - a lack of the kind of gathering places other societies are built around - finds home seekers who have realized they don't have to choose between natural and cultural amenities; and describes those people who are engineering the re-creation of communities with a heart, a focal point, and a strong, unique, often idiosyncratic sense of place.

Against a not-so-settled national backdrop, Pindell discovers people who convince him that they have found and nurtured a good place to live.