Vermont writer Stephen Kiernan has read his fill of bad news, from the seemingly endless war and recession to the Oxford English Dictionary's naming of "unfriend" as word of the year.

So why is he sure he has the plan to make it all good?

A journalist for two decades, Kiernan can report how the United States has the highest rates among developed nations of divorce, bankruptcy, obesity, incarceration and lack of health insurance, all as more Americans are trading face time in their communities for Facebook on their computers.

"Government no longer offers the degree of help it once did, the gains of capitalism offer less aid, and we are so disconnected from one another," he says. "We don't have family dinners together, we don't belong to the churches we grew up in, we don't have people over to our houses anymore."

What to do? Kiernan, searching the past four years for people who have devised local solutions to larger problems, has written a new book, "Authentic Patriotism: Restoring America's Founding Ideals Through Selfless Action."

"The public stands on the sidelines, worried but passive, disenfranchised but hoping someone will come along and fix everything," he writes. "Waiting for Washington to solve our problems only exacerbates our passivity. And that is the main problem, underlying all of the others: We Americans today are not agents of our own salvation."

In Kiernan's mind, real patriots don't fortify the country by arming themselves with flags but instead by lending a hand. Ready to talk up his book and accompanying B1 volunteer campaign, the author hopes readers will heed his call to action.



'The central question'



Kiernan, a New York state native who came to Vermont to attend Middlebury College, thought up his latest book while traveling to promote his last one.

Touring the country with his first nonfiction title, "Last Rights: Rescuing the End of Life from the Medical System," the author listened to countless people lament the nation's ailments, only to show up at hospices and meet volunteers who, dealing with death, nevertheless drew energy and enthusiasm for life.

The country's biggest problem, the 50-year-old Charlotte father of two realized, isn't poverty, pollution or political gridlock but citizen disengagement.

"The result has been a disconnection of people from one another, and a loss of common purpose," he writes. "The central question of our time, therefore, is how we remedy the situation."

The author believes the answer begins by curbing the politically polarizing arguments between liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, supporters of government and free market capitalism. None of them, he says, has hit upon a solution.

That's why he set out to find examples of individual ingenuity — people whose work helps others, can be replicated economically and efficiently, and packs a good story.



'Up in a tree'



Kiernan begins his book with Harold Freeman, the great-great-grandson of slaves who, working as a doctor at Harlem Hospital, created a simple system of clinics and caregivers for breast cancer patients that lowered medical costs and deaths so impressively designer Ralph Lauren donated $5 million for further research.

"Each one of us is gifted," Freeman told Kiernan. "We each need to find our gift, whatever it may be, and we have to develop it so we can create a human benefit from within ourselves. I believe this is the only way to achieve satisfaction and happiness in this life."

The author moves on to recount how Julia Butterfly Hill climbed 18 stories into a centuries-old California redwood tree slated for cutting in 1997. She had planned a five-day sit-in, only to stay 728 until a timber company, facing growing public and press scrutiny, dropped its chain saws.

"No money, no job, no political position, no organization, no media experience, no support staff, no computer or website," Kiernan says. "She just got up in a tree and made the entire world aware."

Then there's the chapter featuring David Goggins, a former 280-pound Navy Seal who, after 11 fellow soldiers died in a rescue mission, decided to run in endurance marathons to raise college scholarship money for his colleagues' surviving children.

Goggins — completing one record-setting 200-mile run in 48 hours — so far has reaped more than $300,000 (and shed nearly 100 pounds).



'What do you got?'



Several of Kiernan's examples benefit taxpayers. More than 70 percent of first-time prisoners released from New York's Rikers Island wind up back behind bars — each costing at least $80,000 a year. But 95 percent of those who receive $7,500 in transition training from the nearby Friends of Island Academy go on to lead productive lives.

"Talk about the crimes that aren't committed, the lives that aren't wasted, the money saved," the author says. "We should be treating every first-time offender in America like that."

Kiernan admits to one problem reporting so many solutions: He had to limit his book to 60 profiles.

"The first draft of this book was twice the length," he says. "I have a very good editor."

Kiernan also has a website — www.authenticpatriotism.com — on which to elaborate. He'll write a blog about role models he meets on his book tour and, on a "B1 Campaign" link, create an electronic clearinghouse of volunteer opportunities. As the author calculates, if every able American over age 10 contributed three hours per week, the nation's nonprofits would gain the equivalent of 19 million full-time helpers.

"All kinds of problems can get solved when you have more people working on them," he says. "We already have enough lobbyists. We do not have enough people building houses for Habitat for Humanity."

Kiernan's 320-page hardcover, published by St. Martin's Press, is set for release Tuesday.

"I fully expect there will be reviewers who won't like this book because of their cynicism." His response: "Mr. Cynic, what do you got? Let me hear Plan B."

For a nation to rally, Kiernan concludes, it first must come together.

"We can say, 'Barack Obama, figure it out for us,' or, 'Congress, come up with some kind of compromise," or we can say, 'We have a stake in this." If we think of America as a great nation, let's behave like that."

kevin.oconnor@rutlandherald.com