Time to start thinking : America and the spectre of decline

In Time to Start Thinking, Edward Luce offers an incisive and highly engaging account of the challenge facing America - a nation in long-term economic and geopolitical decline. This book provides a revealing and intimate portrait of the country at a time of global financial and political upheaval.

Washington bureau chief for the Financial Times for the last four years, Luce has travelled the United States interviewing business and political leaders, from Bill Gates to ex-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, as well as ordinary teachers, workers and scientists, to deliver a brilliant analysis of the world's sole remaining superpower - and where America goes from here.

Covering areas from education and health-care to politics and business and innovation, Luce compares America to Britain as it was in the early twentieth century and argues that the same situation is evolving today in America: in scientific research, Chinese and Korean innovators are increasingly competing with American scientists; in business, giant companies like IBM and General Electric now employ more people abroad than in the United States; in domestic politics, Republicans and Democrats conduct sterile debates in Washington while lobbyists and campaign finance lead the agenda and bureaucracy cripples the education system. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is able to spend over $10 billion a year just on its own IT systems, yet more than a fifth of new teachers leave their jobs within three years.

In what may be the smartest book yet on why and how America is broken. Edward Luce offers a critical nonpartisan analysis and a renowned journalist's report on a country in economic, social and political crisis.