This look at the crisis facing the United States "explores the gaping disconnect between elite optimism and popular bewilderment, anger, and despair" (Foreign Affairs).
"Gentlemen, we have run out of money. It is time to start thinking." -Sir Ernest Rutherford
In a book destined to spark debate among both liberals and conservatives, journalist Edward Luce advances a carefully constructed argument, backed up by interviews with key players in politics and business, that America is losing its pragmatism--and that the consequences of this may soon leave the country high and dry. Addressing the changing structure of the US economy; political polarization; the debilitating effect of the "permanent election campaign"; and problems in education and business innovation, Time to Start Thinking takes a hard look at America's dwindling options in a world where the pace is increasingly being set elsewhere.
"A brilliant reporter who has spoken to everyone: CEOs and members of the cabinet, lobbyists and small town mayors, recent MBAs and unemployed teachers. In his acutely observed, often witty, and very humane portraits, he succeeds in converting the abstractions of economics and bringing them to life." --Liaquat Ahamed, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lords of Finance
"Americans need friends who will tell us what we need to hear and how to think about the troubles, many of our own making, that threaten our democracy, prosperity, and leadership in the world. We've got just such a friend in Ed Luce. He's a foreign observer who has not just traveled widely in the United States but listened carefully to a wide array of our citizens." --Strobe Talbott, president, The Brookings Institution
"In a tradition stretching back to de Tocqueville, sympathetic foreigners are often the keenest observers of American life. Edward Luce is one such person. He paints a highly disturbing picture of the state of American society, and of the total failure of American elites to come to grips with the real problems facing the country. It rises far above the current political rhetoric by its measured reliance on facts." --Francis Fukuyama, author of Identity
About the Author :
Edward Luce is a graduate from Oxford University in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. He worked as a speech writer for the treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, worked as the South Asia bureau chief for the Financial Times and is now based in Washington DC as the Financial Times's Washington Commentator.
Review :
"[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 interviews with sobering statistics ranging from education (twice as many are studying MBAs than engineering) to railways (Obama is investing $8 billion compared to China's $200 billion)."--Independent
"Following a personalized and anecdotal narrative style, Edward Luce covers a wide canvas that describes the causes and possible solutions for the current state of the US economy. . . . Luce hooks from the first sentence . . . There will certainly be more books on the malaise, but this is a very engaging one." --Businessworld
"In the vast library of literature about the United States, books by detached European observers fill only a few short shelves. . . . In some respects, Edward Luce's Time to Start Thinking stands in the lineage of these illustrious forebears."--International Affairs
"[Luce] brings the perspective of both an insider and an outsider to Time To Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent. . . . Luce demonstrates the many weaknesses in U.S. society, which he sees as caused by the extreme conflict in political agendas, the bureaucratic failure to resolve problems efficiently, and the greed that allows CEOs to receive outrageous compensation while employees are shortchanged and outsourced. . . . Time To Start Thinking benefits from Luce's interviews with many experts as well as ordinary people in a wide variety of fields, including business, politics, and education. . . . [Luce] demonstrate[s] a wide-ranging curiosity and an analytical approach to large problems."--John C. Holmes, Federal Lawyer
"A brilliant and devastating critique of those who blame the Democrats--and Obama in particular--for the economic crisis in the US and the
