It's not an exaggeration to say that middle-class Americans are an endangered species and that the American Dream of a secure, comfortable standard of living has become as outdated as an Edsel with an eight-track player—that the United States of America is in danger of becoming a third world nation.
The evidence is all around us: Our industrial base is vanishing, taking with it the kind of jobs that have formed the backbone of our economy for more than a century; our education system is in shambles, making it harder for tomorrow's workforce to acquire the information and training it needs to land good twenty-first-century jobs; our infrastructure—our roads, our bridges, our sewage and water, our transportation and electrical systems—is crumbling; our economic system has been reduced to recurring episodes of Corporations Gone Wild; our political system is broken, in thrall to a small financial elite using the power of the checkbook to control both parties.
And America's middle class, the driver of so much of our economic success and political stability, is rapidly disappearing, forcing us to confront the fear that we are slipping as a nation—that our children and grandchildren will enjoy fewer opportunities and face a lower standard of living than we did. It's the dark flipside of the American Dream—an American Nightmare of our own making.
Arianna Huffington, who, with the must-read Huffington Post, has her finger on the pulse of America, unflinchingly tracks the gradual demise of America as an industrial, political, and economic leader. In the vein of her fiery bestseller Pigs at the Trough, Third World America points fingers, names names, and details who is killing the American Dream.
Finally, calling on the can-do attitude that is part of America's DNA, Huffington shows precisely what we need to do to stop our freefall and keep America from turning into a third world nation.
Third World America is a must-listen for anyone disturbed by our country's steady descent from twentieth-century superpower to backwater banana republic.
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"Audiobook. Pretty good book. Humanizes the current recession, which the MSM only seems to gauge in terms of Wall St numbers, which no longer have anything to do with mainstream America. Offers ideas for solutions. Calls for accountability. More subversive than expected. "
— Malrubius (4 out of 5 stars)
A voice of conscience in a time when we need conscience more than ever.... Huffington is right: it's not too late for citizens to wake up politicians or to take matters into their own hands.
— Elizabeth Warren, coauthor of The Two-Income Trap" Felt outraged when I finished this. "
— md_KG, 6/11/2011" I agree with the premises of this book, but it reads like a paper by a politically active high school student who's never learned how to structure an argument properly. The fact that I think she's right makes it all the more frustrating that 90% of the book is just empty disorganized rhetoric. "
— Wiley, 5/7/2011" Maybe it's because I had just read Thom Hartmann's "Rebooting the American Dream" right before I read this one, but this book didn't do too much for me. It brought a lot of our issues to light, but the writing style was a little elementary. This was just a review of what I already knew. "
— Mr., 3/31/2011" Must read for all Americans, no question. "
— Cheri, 3/13/2011" Another clear eyed view of where America is headed if things do not change. She makes some great arguments for the middle class. "
— Orea, 3/10/2011" Great eye opener to the present and future of the American middle class. "
— Brad, 3/5/2011" Ariana Huffington lays out a variety of points that indicate that the USA is loosing its supremacy in many areas from poor infrastructure to health care <br/>Worth reading. "
— Nicole, 3/5/2011" Totally awesome. Every person in America should read this book. "
— Sharon, 2/18/2011Arianna Huffington was raised in Greece and graduated from Cambridge University. She has written numerous books, appeared on countless television and radio shows, and launched the Huffington Post, an enormously successful online source of news and opinion. In 2006 she was named by Time magazine as one of the most influential people in the world. Her works include On Becoming Fearless…in Love, Work, and Life; Fanatics and Fools: The Game Plan for Winning Back America; How to Overthrow the Government; and Greetings from the Lincoln Bedroom, among others. She has written numerous New York Times bestsellers, including her book Picasso: Creator and Destroyer, which was made into a film starring Anthony Hopkins.
Coleen Marlo is an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator who has been nominated for an Audie Award twice, winning in 2011. She has been awarded three Listen-Up Awards from Publishers Weekly, an AudioFile Audiobook of the Year Award in 2011, and was named Audiobook Narrator of the Year for 2010 by Publishers Weekly. She is a member of the prestigious Actors Studio and taught acting for ten years at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute. Marlo is a proud founding member of Deyan Institute of Voice Artistry and Technology.