The Freeman 1972 - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

444A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK JOHN CHAMBERLAINPLAYING the percentages may letyou down: a well-protected politicalcandidat.e, for example, can beshot in a suburban shopping centerby a kook trailing him from adistant city, which means there isno absolute safety anywhere. ButDavid and Holly Franke, distressedby poll findings that one Americanin eight would like to move abroadto escape crime, drugs and longdistancebusing to poor schools,decided to go by the percentagesanywa,. They got out the FBIcrime reports, looked up the placeswith low rates of homicide andforcible rape, and wrote to a thousandpromising U.S. communitiesfor information about local conditions.Then they set out on an automobiletour of America to havea look at forty-six communitieswhere it seemed that life mightstill be happy, tranquil, profitableand at least relatively free of thefear that the U.S. is doomed to acontinuing steep decline.The result of this unique odysseyis a gigantic volume of 932pages, Safe Places (ArlingtonHouse, $13.95). The book is partnarrative and description, part sociologicalanalysis, and part encyclopedia.The easy reading alternateswith the dry statistics ofreal estate offerings, job opportunities,teacher-pupil ratios, publictennis courts and all the otherthings that one must consider ifone is to pull up stakes and makea move to a new place. Thus thebook makes its appeal to two classesof reader, the person who wantsan answer to the question of