Second-rate nation : from the American dream to the American myth
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Second-rate nation : from the American dream to the American myth
Paradigm, c2005
Available at 3 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
A scathing indictment of America's failure to keep up with other advanced nations and to achieve its own most cherished goals. The chapters of the book focus on: the media, the economy and corporations, foreign assistance and military affairs, health and health care, education, crime and punishment, the environment, inequality, and more. This is the one book to read this year about current events and the United States' many recent failures, which have demoted them to the status of a second-rate nation. The book will be useful for policymakers, journalists, teachers, students, activists and public speakers, and anyone with an interest in the U.S. today. Drawing on copious international and domestic evidence, the author shows that America lags significantly behind other advanced countries in such domains as health care, education, crime, civil liberties, racial and ethnic equality, environmental protection, foreign relations, and key features of the economy, including persistent poverty. The gap extends even to some surprising areas: press freedom and democratic representation. Sieber examines the questions of how and why the peculiar gulf between America's extraordinary self-esteem and the true state of affairs has evolved. He is concerned with understanding how the nation's idealized self-image is sustained in spite of overwhelming evidence of impairment in almost every important domain. In an election year the book is a valuable resource for assessing the challenges the U.S. faces. Apart from the author's powerful thesis, the book is a rich compendium of up-to-date statistical data on a variety of issues, presented without either technical obfuscation or oversimplification. It should therefore be useful to policymakers, journalists, commentators, teachers, students, activists, public speakers, and anyone wishing to know more about the true state of affairs in the U.S. today.
Table of Contents
- Chapter 1 Overview of an Inferior Nation
- Chapter 2 The Economy, Work, Recent Federal Budgets, and Business and Government
- Chapter 3 Health, Health Care, and Costs
- Chapter 4 Education
- Chapter 5 Crime and Punishment
- Chapter 6 The Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources
- Chapter 7 Foreign Affairs-Selected Issues
- Chapter 8 Racial, Ethnic, and Gender Inequality
- Chapter 9 Civil Liberties
- Chapter 10 The Media and Their Relationships with Corporations, the Government, and the Public
- Chapter 11 Democracy
- Chapter 12 Conclusions and a New Beginning
by "Nielsen BookData"