Mr. Garreau's thesis is that current political and economic issues and changing

demographics demand a changed view of regional groupings in North America, cutting across present-day borders. He argues persuasively that Alberta, say, has much more in common with Colorado than with Ottawa, and that Colorado has more in common with eastern British Columbia than it has with Atlanta. Like Mr. Wolfe, above, he has brought a visual aid: a large map of North America divided not into three major countries (plus the Caribbean) but into nine regions, which he calls "nations," such as "the Foundry" (the industrial Northeastern United States), "Ecotopia" (the U.S. Northwest and the Canadian Far West), and "the Islands" (the Caribbean, including part of Florida). What implications does he draw? "I'm not a separatist... I'm a reporter. I'm saying that this is the way things are working now; that this describes the sources of a lot of conflicts that are going through our public affairs."