Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America’s Fifty-Year Fall-and Those Fighting to Reverse It

An axiom is that a frog put in boiling water will jump out, but if the water is heated gradually, the frog will boil to death. Those of us who wondered how things became so intolerable politically can be enlightened by this book. The premise, supported by painstaking facts, is that things have degenerated for the past fifty years. For example, there are twenty lobbyists for every congressperson in Washington. The environmental protections that were won by Ralph Nader have been turned around by corporations to build capitalism at the expense of the general public. The state of our infrastructure has devolved to an average of 657 water main breaks per day and crumbling bridges in major cities. The world’s richest country has the highest poverty rate among thirty-five nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, except for Mexico. Bipartisanship, which was once the hallmark of legislation, has gone the way of civility. If one is already depressed, one is likely to reach despair upon reading this carefully researched and indexed book. It also has photographs of some of the heroes and villains featured in this decline. An important book.