How Fargo of You: Lessons in Kindness from America's Most Surprising Success

What's with North Dakota? Why is this remote state at the top of the country at or near the top of almost every 'best of' list these days? 'How Fargo of You' is the easiest, most engaging, funniest way to find out.

When Marc de Celle and his family moved to Fargo, strange things started to happen...

Three extremely capable teenagers they didn't know helped them move in... expecting nothing in return! A carpenter they met at a rock concert did exceptional work for them... then insisted it was a housewarming gift! An unknown couple in a restaurant paid for their meals... and left without telling them!

Then they watched this culture of anonymous kindness beat back natural disaster and sidestep the Great Recession. At first, whenever these things happened, they were speechless. But one day, they finally found the right thing to say...

How Fargo of You!

'I'd lived in Arizona and California all my life,' de Celle says, 'and moving to Fargo was like landing on a different planet with a different species!' De Celle, whose previous writing is scientific, turns out to be a funny, relaxed, incisive storyteller as he takes the reader along on his personal journey into finding out what makes America's most surprising success tick.

Marc de Celle is the author of How Fargo of You, the acclaimed runaway bestseller in North Dakota now making its way across the rest of the country. De Celle combines humor with a scientific eye: His previous work includes the acclaimed 2004 report Anticipating Crisis, which warned of accumulating risks to U.S. infrastructure before these dangers were widely recognized, garnering accolades from leading scientists, authors and experts across a wide range of fields.

'One of the weird things about North Dakota,' de Celle says, 'is that people actually think ahead and solve those kinds of problems before they happen - the annual crisis of winter trains Dakotans to do that. So after moving to Fargo, I had to find something else to write about, and I'd already come up with this expression, 'How Fargo of You,' for all these strange, generous, smart ways the locals have of doing things...'

Marc lives with his wife, Charlene, and their two children, very happily just north of Fargo.