Time to Start Thinking America in the Age of Descent

"[Luce] knows the country well, and he wishes it well too. A result is that he leavens his yearning for smarter, more nimble government with a realism not always found among Europeans . . . Luce is a good writer with a vacuum-cleaner for a notebook. His book could not be bettered as a compendium of American problems, at least as filtered through the center-left sensibilities of a pro-American European. . . . "Time to Start Thinking" raises the right questions at the right moment, which is what books are supposed to do. It deserves an audience in America. And I wouldn't be surprised, too, if it ends up stacked on the best-seller tables in China."--"The New York Times Book Review" "Superb reporting of the on-ground reality of America's current economic crisis . . . an unflinchingly brave book. Luce does not shy away from conclusions that are hard for many Americans to hear, not does he cop out and offer up the happy ending many in his audience may want to read. Rather, he offers what is most needed now: an objective profoundly thoughtful look at the underpinnings of America's economic troubles, what makes the current crisis different from the past, and where we are likely headed from here."--"Foreign Policy" "Carefully balanced and often startlingly evocative analysis and reportage . . . It is true that there have been serious errors in policy. Luce, formerly the "Financial Times"'s south Asia bureau chief based in New Delhi and now the paper's chief Washington correspondent, spells out these exercises in self-damage in painful and illuminating detail."--"The Guardian" "The book is not simply a laundry list of present-day policy failures (of which there have been many) but as hinted at by the title of a political system that's stopped constructively engaging with policy challenges. . . . It's time to start thinking."--Slate.com "From the FT's chief Washington correspondent, this gloomy but absorbing view of US prospects combines interviewsn