Somewhere out in the desert, there is a place called Four Corners. It's Navajo land, or so I understand, with little in the way of human habitation anywhere. It is famous only by accident; it's the place where the lines of latitude and longitude that mark the borders of four Southwestern states meet. It is marked by a stone showing the borders, and you can walk around the stone and be in all four states in less than a minute.

Big deal.

If you want to know what a real crossroads is like, come to Austin, Texas, baby. Right in the bottom-left-hand corner of the Old South, right on the edge of where the live oaks and bluebonnets turn into juniper and mesquite. To the east are charming little Southern towns like Taylor and Bastrop. To the west are charming little Western towns like Fredericksburg and Llano. And to the south is the bustling metropolis of San Antonio, where half the country-western morning show is done in Spanish, and the brush country of South Texas.

I can't show you any boundaries on your basic, normal map, of course. Oh, I can point to Interstate 35 and tell you that's about where the South ends -- except that the best Southern restaurant in town is a few blocks west. I can point to the Colorado River and say that the Hispanic influence is to the south, except for all the good Mexican places in North Austin. All I can say is that Austin is a border town without any real borders -- and that the only other large city in the country like it is Indianapolis.

Yes, that's right.

If you buy Joel Garreau's thesis, Austin is at the corner of three of the Nine Nations of North America. To the south is the nation of MexAmerica, stretching from Los Angeles to Houston and south to Monterrey. To the west is the nation of The Breadbasket, stretching from the Texas Hill Country to the barley fields of Saskatchewan. To the east is Dixie, which goes east to Virginia Beach and north to, you guessed it, Indianapolis, which also sits on the border between The Foundry and The Breadbasket.

I hope this isn't confusing you so far.

Garreau's thesis is that the borders between the U.S., Canada and Mexico mean nothing in terms of defining regions, and that the borders between states mean even less. There are no less than Nine Nations between the shores of the Atlantic and the Pacific. Traveling west to east, they are:

Ecotopia: The coastal strip between the Pacific and the Sierra Nevada and other mountains, running from Silicon Valley to Anchorage. Its capital is San Francisco. It produces high-technology and wacky environmental theory, and has the most to gain from increased trade with China.

MexAmerica: The southern parts of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, along with the northern Mexican states. Its twin capitals are Los Angeles and Houston. Its most prominent feature is the U.S. - Mexico border, the increase of trade brought by NAFTA, and the problems of illegal immigration and migrant workers. Spanish is fast becoming the dominant language.

The Empty Quarter: Its capital is Denver, but it stretches to the Arctic. Here in the Rocky Mountain states, Northern Canada and most of Alaska is where our greatest untapped natural resources lie, and our greatest untamed natural wilderness.

The Breadbasket: Dominated by farm-and-ranch concerns, this nation is the only one that's landlocked. It stretches from eastern Colorado to western Indiana, skirting the big border cities of Chicago and St. Louis. Kansas City is its capital.

Dixie: The Old Confederacy, if I'm still allowed to say that. It includes Kentucky and East Texas and Southeast Oklahoma, but excludes Northern Virginia and South Florida. The capital is in Atlanta, where I live now, but Atlanta is itself hardly Southern. ("I don't live in Georgia," I tell people, "I live in Atlanta.")

The Foundry: The Rust Belt of the Great Lakes states and southern Ontario, stretching all the way to New Jersey. The home of heavy industry, the birthplace of the brownfield. The most populated of the Nine Nations -- for now -- and the only one in which labor unions are a force. Its financial capital is New York, but its heart is in Detroit.

Quebec: The only Nation that exists on the map today, and the only one that knows more French than "merci beaucoup". It's in Canada, for now, and might be the first step on the road to the breakup of the nations we have now.

New England: Garreau throws in the Canadian Maritime Provinces, and excludes the Connecticut bedroom communities near New York, but it's basically what we have now on the map. Basically, if you're a Red Sox fan, you're in New England.

The Islands: Miami and points south, including Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and northern Venezuela. The big industry is drug-running, followed by bootleg Jimmy Buffett CD's and tourism. You need a boat and a suntan to fit in.

The idea is great, staggering, if you will. It explains... well, not everything about cultural geography, but lots and lots. The book, on the other hand... well...

It's awfully, awfully dated, of course, by virtue of being twenty years old. There's quite a lot about the energy crisis that doesn't have much relevance to today (check back next week, though). It talks a lot about the limitless future of the microchip; and we're kind of seeing what those limits are now.

However, the book itself is secondary to the idea. Garreau explains the idea at length, even including aberrations like Manhattan, Washington DC, and Hawaii. He takes us to all Nine Nations and explains not only the boundaries but the ethos, and introduces us to the issues and the people that populate each of them. (Not to mention their unique mental illnesses; acute loneliness in the Empty Quarter, the link between joblessness and depression in the Foundry, and the trendy sillinesses of Ecotopia.)

If the idea interests you at all, or helps you in sorting out this wacky idea called America (and the even more wacky idea called Canada), this book is for you. Otherwise, go live your lives.

This is a reposted review, appearing earlier on Epinions in much the same format. (It is also a former EA Forums Mystery Book ™.) Movie reviews by this author that formerly appeared on this site are available at txreviews.com.

Recommended: Yes