Book excerpt: America's Top-Rated Cities is a four-volume set, each book covering a specific region of the United States - Southern, Wstern, Central, and Eastern. Each volume includes narrative city backgrounds, statistical information, rankings, and comparative data in one easy-to-use source, on cities that have scored high marks on economy, education, health care, crime, transportation, leisure activities, and arts & culture. the final list of top-rated cities is derived from our unique rating system, which is based on a number of well-known "best of" lists and firth-hand experience