Every night at the end of Jim Lehrer’s News Hour on America’s PBS channel, there is a roll call of American soldiers who died in Iraq that day. Apart from their tragic fates, most of the dead have something else in common – they come from places of which few people have heard.

Obscure towns like Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, Wolfeboro Falls, New Hampshire and Thermopolis, Wyoming, dominate the listings rather than the big cities.