Rodale

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.

"William Greider is America's leading chornicler of money, power, and politics."
—Bill Moyers, PBS host

"Greider's moment . . . 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' . . . With the time's propitious and unprecedented organizing tools (the Internet, especially) readily available, the people may finally be sufficiently aroused—in the manner of the late 19th-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."
—Kirkus Reviews

"Ever since the early 1990s, Greider has been warning that our democracy is in peril because America’s political parties have abandoned the citizenry in favor of the interests of corporations and the power elite. Here he outlines the full substance of the predicament we find ourselves in as exhibited by the financial collapse: a culmination of our decaying democracy, the negative effects of globalism, the dominance of militarism in our financial policy, the destruction of the middle class, and the threat of global climate change. Greider argues that spreading our style of democracy through force is a new form of imperialism stemming from an arrogance of power. He sees much pain in our future if we remain on our current course but finds hope for a day of reckoning when mass social movements and a third front that fills the space between big government and the private sector will take power back into the hands of ordinary citizens. While those in power may claim that Greider’s ideas are defeatist or unpatriotic, it is during times like these that his dissenting ideas are likely to resonate with a large and angry audience."
—David Siegfried, Booklist

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.