Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country by William Greider

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Synopsis

Perhaps no one is better equipped to analyze the current state of our democracy than legendary reporter William Greider. He has covered politics from the nation’s capital for four decades—for the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, and most recently The Nation—and has earned a reputation as one of our most incisive, uncompromising truth-tellers and social critics. In his bestseller Who Will Tell the People, Greider opened the American public’s eyes to the hidden relationships that link politicians with corporations and the wealthy, often subverting the needs of ordinary citizens. Now, in his first book on our democracy in years, Greider examines the impact of current American policy, revealing how our obsession with remaining “Number One” in the world has caused us to stray from the democratic values and ideals upon which our country was founded. By examining the economic and political forces that have brought us to where we are today—financial crisis, deepening indebtedness to other nations, the loss of productive assets and jobs, the militarization of U.S. foreign policy, and more—Greider offers, in a powerful and conversational tone, clarity on the consequences and long-term implications of our national predicament. He then offers optimism that our young country can put aside its adolescent impulses and grow up so that we can “come home” to what is really important—a return to our nation’s core values and the freedom to create a better, more fulfilling society.

Kirkus Reviews

The Nation's national affairs correspondent diagnoses America's perilous state and calls for a rebirth of participatory democracy..After nearly 40 years as a reporter and author of several books, Greider (The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy, 2003, etc.) has earned his reputation as a serious, thoughtful, albeit "uncredentialed" critic of our democracy. He has consistently warned about America's trade deficits and national debt, our crumbling infrastructure and inadequate health-care system and a greedy and gluttonous capitalism unconcerned with equity and security. He has inveighed against a costly, overreaching militarism, environmental depredations and, most of all, against a deformed democracy where big business gives orders to governing elites hopelessly out of touch with the people they pretend to serve. It's a left-leaning critique, closely approximated by the soundly rejected political campaigns of Jesse Jackson, Dennis Kucinich, John Edwards and Ralph Nader. Greider's moment, though, may have arrived. Given the current, gloomy circumstances, all neatly summarized here, it's more difficult than ever to argue with his analysis, and he's surely correct that "in crisis lies opportunity." There are, he warns, wrenching changes ahead, changes too important to be left to the same stewards who've created the current debacle. Greider hopes that the anxious and angry electorate will attempt an end run around our "betters" to seize control from the current concentrations of power. With the times propitious and unprecedented organizing tools (the Internet, especially) readily available, the people may finally be sufficiently aroused—in the manner of the late19th-century Populists and the early New Dealers—to demand accountability from a system that has failed them. If they do, historians may point to this book as one of the prairie fire's first sparks..Astute, hopeful and humane commentary..Agent: Lynn Nesbit/Janklow & Nesbit.

Biography

WILLIAM GREIDER is national affairs correspondent for The Nation and the best-selling author of five previous books, including One World, Ready or Not; Who Will Tell the People; and Secrets of the Temple.