"There are no second acts in America," so wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald though I suspect he'd take that back if he could. If Americans are exceptional - and they are on both sides of the ledger - it is first and foremost for their willingness to adapt. While much of the industrialized world struggles to reinvent itself - risk averse Japan, for example, or a wheezing central Europe - in America there is no shame in going bust. Only the Hong Kong Chinese refer more reverently to their failures, like connoisseurs would a collection of pampered Edsels.

For thirty years I worked as a news reporter. I covered politics, economics, war and culture in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. Journalism was my passion as well as my livelihood until it was leveled by a tempest of new technologies and shifting mores. I now build cabinets and renovate old homes for an economy with a weakness for overbuilding.

This website is a chronicle of a uniquely American transformation.