Joel Kotkin describes for City Journal the manufacturing revival underway in American Heartland states, powered largely by fortuitous proximity, a burning desire for prosperity in their communities and good old Yankee ingenuity. Perhaps the “Mean Tweeter” was onto something after all.

Toppling a Communist Empire for $2.7 Million
Though widely thought of as focused on waterboarding terrorists or poisoning foreign potentates, it was by smuggling paper that the CIA achieved its most monumental triumph. R.M. Gerecht in a book review for The Washington Free Beacon charts how the late Cold War-era operation to flood Poland with Western books, magazines, printing supplies and audio recordings fatally weakened the country’s Communist dictatorship, setting the stage for the downfall of the entire Soviet empire. Total cost: US$2.7 million.


