AFTER AMERICA PDF, EPUB, EBOOK

John Birmingham | 502 pages | 26 Jul 2011 | Random House USA Inc | 9780345502926 | English | New York, United States U.S. Enters WWI - HISTORY

The Soviet Army had left in , after ten years of fighting the American- and Saudi-backed guerrillas known as the mujahideen. Najibullah was a charismatic and ruthless leader, but, as the last of the Soviet troops departed, no one gave him much of a chance to remain in power. The Soviet Minister of Defense figured that Najibullah would last only a few months. The regime, sustained by a flow of food and ammunition from the Soviet Union, held firm. The Afghan Army fought well, routing the mujahideen in a decisive battle for the city of Jalalabad. But in late the Soviet Union fell apart, leaving Najibullah and his fellow-Communists to fend for themselves. With their supplies running out, soldiers began to desert the Afghan Army. The mujahideen poured into the capital, wild and hollow-eyed after years in the countryside. It took them a few days to get everything. When they finished, they came after everyone else. Kabul imploded: electricity disappeared from the city, police vanished, government services ceased, Kabul University closed. The mujahideen started grabbing pieces of the city. Some of his Pashtun friends had crossed over and never returned. The militias fought each other continuously, and it was too dangerous to leave the house. They were raping girls, raping boys. The family had no access to food, and Nasir ached from hunger. He could venture out only when the militiamen called an occasional ceasefire. Macroyan was largely under the control of a fourth group, an Uzbek militia called Junbish-e-Milli, led by a warlord of exceptional brutality named Abdul Rashid Dostum, who had fought for the Soviets. Over the next three years, tens of thousands of Afghans died in the civil war. The various militias, in a frenzy to mark their territory, carpeted the city with mines. There were so many mines in Kabul that, in the mid-nineteen-nineties, according to United Nations figures, an average of fifty people per week stepped on them, risking death and terrible injury. In the autumn of , the Taliban, armed and backed by the Pakistani military, reached the outskirts of Kabul. On its march across the country, the Taliban had vanquished every militia in its path. Around this time, Nasir travelled to his ancestral village, Deh Afghanan, about twenty-five miles west of Kabul, for his wedding day. Nasir could see the Taliban forces a few hundred yards away. The wedding proceeded, and so did the funerals. Nasir shared his wedding feast with the grieving family. Like most people in Kabul, Nasir welcomed the arrival of the Taliban in the city, because they had kicked out the mujahideen and brought peace. But soon the Taliban took to enforcing their brutal and medieval brand of Islam. But if you were educated it was hell. Nasir celebrated the American invasion in , and, in the decade that followed, he prospered, and fathered six children. But now, with the United States planning its withdrawal by the end of , Nasir blames the Americans for a string of catastrophic errors. And now they are getting ready to go. These days, Nasir said, the nineties are very much on his mind. The announced departure of American and NATO combat troops has convinced him and his friends that the civil war, suspended but never settled, is on the verge of resuming. This time, everyone has more guns, more to lose. It will be the same groups, the same commanders. The Afghan Army is unlikely to be able to restore order as it did in the time of Najibullah. They get tired making TV commercials! A few weeks ago, Nasir returned to Deh Afghanan. The Taliban were back, practically ignored by U. You can see them carrying their weapons. The ethnic battle lines in Afghanistan have not changed. Pashtuns, who dominate both the government and the Taliban, are from the south; the ethnic minorities—Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, and many others—live mainly in the north. The capital, Kabul, is multiethnic and the focal point of all political and military ambition. Three years ago, the area around Kunduz fell under the control of the Taliban, who collected taxes, maintained law and order, and adjudicated disputes. A panel of Taliban imams held trials in a local mosque. There was an Afghan government in the area, with a governor and a police force, but the locals regarded it as ineffectual and corrupt. In the fall of , the Americans stepped up their efforts to reinforce the Afghan government. American commandos swooped into villages almost every night, killing or carrying away insurgents. The most effective weapon against the Taliban were people like Mohammad Omar, the commander of a local militia. The Taliban had killed Habibullah in , and Omar jumped at the opportunity to take revenge. He set up forces in a string of villages on the southern bank of the Khanabad River. The Taliban are gone from Khanabad now, but Omar and his fighters are not. Omar has four thousand. The N. Omar insists that he and his men are not being paid by either the Americans or the Afghan government, but he appears to enjoy the support of both. His stack of business cards includes that of Brigadier General Edward Reeder, an American in charge of Special Forces in Afghanistan in , when the Americans began counterattacking in Kunduz. The militias established or tolerated by the Afghan and American governments constitute a reversal of the efforts made in the early years of the war to disarm such groups, which were blamed for destroying the country during the civil war. At the time, American officials wanted to insure that the government in Kabul had a monopoly on the use of force. Kunduz Province is divided into fiefdoms, each controlled by one of the new militias. In Khanabad district alone, I counted nine armed groups. Like Omar, Alam was a commander during the civil war. He was a member of Jamiat-e-Islami. Alam and his men, who declined to speak to me, are said to be paid by the Afghan government. As in the nineties, the militias around Kunduz have begun fighting each other for territory. They also steal, tax, and rape. He is unrelated to the militia commander. The government is not strong enough to collect taxes. None of the militias I encountered appeared to be under any government supervision. In Aliabad, a town in the south of the province, a group of about a hundred men called the Critical Infrastructure Protection force had set up a string of checkpoints. Their commander, Amanullah Terling, another former Jamiat commander, said that his men were protecting roads and development projects. His checkpoints flew the flag of Jamiat-e-Islami. It appears to receive lots of cash but little direct supervision. Together, the militias set up to fight the Taliban in Kunduz are stronger than the government itself. Some police officers praised the militias for helping bring order to Kunduz; others worried that the government had been eclipsed. The confrontations between government forces and militias usually end with the government giving way. Much of the violence and disorder in Kunduz, as elsewhere in Afghanistan, takes place beyond the vision of American soldiers and diplomats. German, Norwegian, and American soldiers are stationed in Kunduz, but, in the three days I spent there, I saw only one American patrol. The American diplomats responsible for Kunduz are stationed seventy-five miles away, in a heavily fortified base in Mazar-e-Sharif. When I met a U. Largely prohibited from venturing outside their compounds, many American officials exhibit little knowledge of events beyond the barricades. They often appear to occupy themselves with irrelevant activities such as filling out paperwork and writing cables to their superiors in the United States. Some of them send tweets——in English, in a largely illiterate country, with limited Internet usage. In the early years of the war, diplomats were encouraged to leave their compounds and meet ordinary Afghans. In recent years, personal safety has come to overshadow all other concerns. On April 15th, when a group of Taliban guerrillas seized buildings in Kabul and started firing on embassies, the U. The more knowledgeable American officials say they have a plan to deal with the militias: as the U. But exactly when and how this will happen is unclear, especially since the Afghan security forces are almost certain to shrink. Bolger, the head of the NATO training mission, said. Nashir, the Khanabad governor, who is the scion of a prominent family, said that the rise of the warlords was just the latest in a series of ominous developments in a country where government officials exercise virtually no independent authority. Nashir grew increasingly vehement. Atta will take Mazar-e-Sharif. Dostum will take Sheberghan. The Karzais will take Kandahar. The Haqqanis will take Paktika. Khan, an ethnic Tajik, is a former deputy to Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of Jamiat-e-Islami, who was killed in Jamiat is composed mostly of ethnic Tajiks, a minority in Afghanistan, and the group that held out longest against the Taliban, until the American invasion. When the Taliban were chased out of Kabul, Khan—known by the initials B. The Taliban draw most of their recruits from the Pashtuns; many members of the Afghan government, including President Karzai, are also Pashtun. According to Afghan and American officials, Karzai decided to remove Bismillah Khan as Army chief over fears that he was packing the middle ranks of the Afghan officer corps with fellow Jamiat officers who might be more loyal to him than to the Afghan state. This was not a new concern, but it was possibly an urgent one. According to a survey conducted by an international organization in , roughly seventy per cent of the colonels and generals in the Afghan Army appeared to be loyal to Khan. The maneuverings of B. A man in Bamiyan carries stones to build the foundation for a house on a small plot of land he owns. He was previously displaced by the Taliban. Another concern is that Jamiat officers within the Afghan Army could indeed try to mount a coup against Karzai or a successor. The most likely trigger for a coup, these officials say, would be a peace deal with the Taliban that would bring them into the government or even into the Army itself. Tajiks and other ethnic minorities would find this intolerable. Another scenario would most likely unfold after a series of dramatic military advances by the Taliban after the American pullout. And, of course, once people assume that civil war is going to happen then that can sometimes be a self-fulfilling prophecy. American officials say that they monitor closely the ethnic composition of the Afghan security forces for any hints of ethnic tension. A senior Afghan defense official told me that ethnic tensions in the Army are stirring beneath the surface. The only thing stopping the civil war is the presence of the Americans. Since removing B. He replaced B. General Karimi is charismatic and mercurial. Karimi has set out to dilute the influence of the Jamiat officers and defuse ethnic tensions. American officials say that they also are worried about efforts by the Taliban—and, they assume, the government of Pakistan—to subvert the Afghan military from within. Several hundred soldiers in the Afghan Army are thought to be agents for the Taliban or for Pakistan, a former American official told me. In the spring of this year, a relative of an official at the Ministry of Defense was caught trying to smuggle three suicide vests into the building. The Afghan defense official echoed that concern, saying that there was little vetting of Pashtun recruits, some of whom, he said, were assumed to be loyal to the Taliban or to the Pakistani intelligence services. Since moving to the Ministry of Interior, Bismillah Khan reportedly has continued his covert policy of promoting his allies. Among other measures, B. Officials told me that B. Daud was killed last year in a Taliban suicide bombing. But at least some of those officials appear to be considering the possibility. Abdul Ali, a police chief in Kunduz and a former Jamiat member, told me that any sort of peace deal that brought the Taliban into the government would be unacceptable. Antonio Giustozzi believes that the moment of maximum danger will come after , when the Americans have all but certainly withdrawn the last of their combat forces. At that point, the Taliban will likely begin to make substantial territorial gains, particularly in remote areas. When that happens, parts of the Afghan Army—particularly its Pashtun segments—could dissolve. The troops would probably think they are on the wrong side of the divide. After eleven years, nearly two thousand Americans killed, sixteen thousand Americans wounded, nearly four hundred billion dollars spent, and more than twelve thousand Afghan civilians dead since , the war in Afghanistan has come to this: the United States is leaving, mission not accomplished. By the end of , when the last Americans are due to stop fighting, the Taliban will not be defeated. A Western-style democracy will not be in place. The economy will not be self-sustaining. No senior Afghan official will likely be imprisoned for any crime, no matter how egregious. American soldiers and diplomats are engaged in a campaign of what amounts to strategic triage: muster enough Afghan soldiers and policemen to take over a fight that the United States and its allies could not win and hand it off to whatever sort of Afghan state exists, warts and all. The post American campaign in Afghanistan is likely to be a minimalist, if long-term, enterprise—perhaps ten or fifteen thousand American trainers, pilots, and intelligence officers, as well as Special Forces troops to kill suspected terrorists. At the moment, the American strategy consists of pushing Afghans into the field, to take over the fighting as quickly as possible. In practice, that means training Afghan soldiers, training Afghan trainers, and building the places to train them in. It means equipping more than three hundred and fifty thousand Afghan soldiers and policemen with guns, uniforms, Humvees, barracks, gasoline trucks, food, helicopters, hospitals, and spare parts. In a country where eighty per cent of the recruits are illiterate, the Americans are teaching tens of thousands of Afghan soldiers to read—at a first-grade level. The cost of this crash exercise in army-building is around eleven billion dollars a year. American commanders say they are confident that the Afghan Army and police will be able to take over the fight as NATO forces draw down. In various regions, towns, and cities, there have been inspiring projects and success stories—hospitals, schools, roads. The effort of the people doing this work is extraordinary, poignant, even superhuman. The men and women commanding the over-all campaign are smart and committed and self-questioning. Indeed, some of the early indications are that the strategy is beginning to work: these days, almost half of the military operations that unfold in Afghanistan are led by Afghans. The majority of all military missions now have Afghan participation. Sometimes, that participation is minimal: Afghan soldiers might be walking on a patrol through a village in eastern Afghanistan, but that patrol was planned, supplied, and protected by the Americans. Can the Americans remove themselves entirely from fighting in little more than two years and expect the country to hold together? Senior American officers have not always been reliable on this question. Americans were in charge. Nicholson, the Marine commander in Marjah at the time, who is now the head of the coalition military operations in the country, told me. Even now, questions linger about how accurately the progress of the Afghan military is being measured. Last year, in a semi-annual report to Congress, the U. Department of Defense said that only one Afghan battalion—about three hundred soldiers—was capable of operating independently. Less than a year later, after the Americans changed the criteria for evaluating those units, the number of battalions deemed independent leaped to thirteen. That figure represents only a small percentage of the hundred and fifty-six Afghan Army battalions. In , Germany, determined to win its war of attrition against the Allies, announced the resumption of unrestricted warfare in war-zone waters. Three days later, the United States broke diplomatic relations with Germany, and just hours after that the American liner Housatonic was sunk by a German U-boat. In late March, Germany sunk four more U. Four days later, his request was granted. On June 26, the first 14, U. When the war finally ended, on November 11, , more than two million American soldiers had served on the battlefields of Western Europe, and some 50, of them had lost their lives. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! The German air force launches Operation Castigo, the bombing of Belgrade, on April 6, , as 24 divisions and 1, tanks drive into Greece. The attack on Yugoslavia was swift and brutal, an act of terror resulting in the death of 17, civilians—the largest number of civilian On April 6, , American explorer Robert Peary accomplishes a long elusive dream, when he, assistant Matthew Henson and four Eskimos reach what they determine to be the North Pole. Born in Vermont in , Smith claimed in that he had been visited by a Christian angel named At the opening of the Athens Games, King Georgios I of Greece and a crowd of 60, spectators welcomed athletes from On April 6, , John Tyler is sworn in as president. He was the first vice president to immediately assume the Determined to resist the growing presence of Anglo settlers on traditional tribal lands, the Sauk warrior Black Hawk is drawn into war with the United States. Called Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak by his people, Black Hawk was born in in the village of Saukenuk in the present-day Sign up now to learn about This Day in History straight from your inbox. Writer Oscar Wilde is arrested after losing a libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry. However, he lost his Kubrick, whose Cold War satire Dr. Strangelove had been popular with audiences and critics alike, was intrigued by science fiction but felt the genre rarely produced interesting films. He became On April 6, , Sam Sheppard, a doctor convicted of murdering his pregnant wife in a trial that caused a media frenzy in the s, dies of liver failure. After America - Wikipedia

Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — After America by John Birmingham. March 14, , was the day the world changed forever. A wave of energy slammed into North America and devastated the continent. The U. Global order spiraled into chaos. Now, three years later, a skeleton U. Pirates and foreign militias are swarming the East Coast, taking everything they can. Caught up in the violence is a Polish-born sergeant who watches the carnage through the eyes of an intellectual and with the heart of a warrior. Two smugglers, the highborn Lady Julianne Balwyn and her brawny partner Rhino, search for a treasure whose key lies inside an Upper East Side Manhattan apartment. Thousands of miles away, a rogue general leads the secession of Texas and a brutal campaign against immigrants, while Miguel Pieraro, a Mexican-born rancher, fights back. And in England, a U. With New York clutched in the grip of thousands of heavily armed predators, is an all-out attack on the city the only way to save it? Get A Copy. Hardcover , pages. More Details Original Title. The Disappearance 2. Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about After America , please sign up. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of After America The Disappearance, 2. Shelves: dystopia-sf. This series suffers from being written as a series of independent threads, with 'at best,' marginal, tenuous cross-overs links. There are elements, and characters I liked, especially Caitlan, and Jules. But, its a book I'll only ever read once. The second installment of Birmingham's "The Disappearance" Trilogy and much like the first, it's a bit The characters from the first book are now a couple of years down the line and part of an America trying to rebuild itself after the devastation of The Wave. About the only really interesting character was President Kipper who has to struggle with the realities of a collapsed economy, government structure and war with jihadist insurgence intent on settling the devastated and dead island The second installment of Birmingham's "The Disappearance" Trilogy and much like the first, it's a bit About the only really interesting character was President Kipper who has to struggle with the realities of a collapsed economy, government structure and war with jihadist insurgence intent on settling the devastated and dead island of Manhattan. Call me too liberal but I can't help but see the book as overtly racist. Every single Muslim in the book is a fundamentalist headcase intent on imposing Shira law wherever they have settled post wave. Just about every action take by a Muslim character is barbaric and designed to take the world back to the stone age. I thought we'd left that kind of vernacular back in the 70's. Jul 08, Mary Hoag rated it did not like it. Didn't see much need for this book. There are a few new characters and some revisited, but the majority of the book is a shoot-em-up military free for all. There is no further development of the bubble and the people who disappeared. I was very disappointed and only finished the book hoping for action in the ending by mercilessly skipping through it. Really disappointing - don't understand how this got so many good reviews. Apr 09, T. Big fan of this whole series and wish John Birmingham would get back to it. This is the second of two in a trilogy about a large part of the US being wiped out by an unexplained 'energy distortion'. Yeah, dumb premise, but an entertaining 'what if' - what if the USA just disappeared from the geopolitical landscape overnight? Chaos reigns, of course, but chaos can be entertaining. The third book of the series finished on a cliffhanger, so I want there to be a followup. Unfortunately Mr Birmingham is Big fan of this whole series and wish John Birmingham would get back to it. Unfortunately Mr Birmingham is too busy these days as a mass media commentator and blogger, and has not been very productive lately regarding fiction. He started a new series called 'Emergence' but unfortunately seems to have tried to copy another Aussie author called Mathew OReilly who just writes action books as though they were action movies. Emergence was Birmingham's attempt to do the same, and people either love it or hate if check the reviews on Goodreads for example. I hope he finishes up the fish and chips fodder that is the Emergence series and gets back to the geopolitical 'what if' game. He has done a great job of 'what if a US nuclear carrier task force was sent back in time' and 'what if the USA disappeared tomorrow' so I would love him to return to 'what if dot dot dot' with something a little more heavyweight that Emergence. Jan 04, Steve rated it really liked it Shelves: fiction. Upon reflection after finishing this book, I'm sad that not really anything of any substance happened. The time jump from the end of the first book until this book were a little jarring. And sure, story lines moved along at a good pace, and there was a rather satisfying climax, short as it was, but it still feels like every large shock is being saved for the last book in the series. I think I'm invested enough that I have to discover what happens to the main characters now. View 1 comment. For people who listen to audio books, it is terrible to listen to one then the next right after it. It might be the same reader, but it has been years in his life and he never does the same voices that he did the first time. Oh well. What to say about this book. I liked it. There were still some of the problems I had with the previous books, where the narrative skips around from point to point of view but the times do not mesh. In one narrative the author makes a comment about a protagonist noticing the still snow bound trees in Texas, and within a few pages we have another character spending hours in New York City's waterways. It isn't till half-way through the book that we realize that the first narrative is taking 5 months in the past and there seems to be no good reason for the author to have hidden this from us. Three of the view points are from characters that were main characters in the first Novel. Juilanne Balwyn, an assassin of many names and the president, I won't mention his name here in case someone hasn't read the first novel. We are also introduced to two people who were secondary characters but who now have bigger rolls in this book. Miguel Pieraro who has his whole family killed in front of him and must escape Texas with his only remaining family member and a Polish Sergeant who is trying to stay alive and clean up New York. I felt the Miguel storyline was the standout. His story had brought to mind passages of Lonesome Dove. If you liked the first book then you will like this one. If you haven't read the first one, then stop and read it first. After reading "Without Warning" I couldn't let too much time pass by before I read the next in the trilogy. In "Without Warning" the apocalypse has happened, at least for North America. Birmingham built up a plausible world of chaos and survival. In "After America" we are three years into that post-apocalyptic world. The US has been virtually emptied of all human life, great destruction has occurred, now it is time for something to fill that vacuum. Once again John Birmingham does a very plausib After reading "Without Warning" I couldn't let too much time pass by before I read the next in the trilogy. Once again John Birmingham does a very plausible job of painting one possible way things would develop It is unsafe, violent, full of fanatical extremists trying to establish their own fiefdoms and of a rump US trying to create some sort of stability in a world where it is no longer number one. I found this to be a very thrilling ride with just enough variation of pace to keep the various storylines running and keeping my attention riveted on the page. There were times it read like a war novel, others when it read like a spy novel, but there were also times when it was very much in the post- apocalypse genre. I would give this book five stars but I'm trying to reserve those for truly mind-boggling stuff This was a close-run thing. I can't wait to read the next in the series While the first book in this series, "Without Warning", had an ending which wrapped up the plot lines of the book, but left enough intrigue to get the reader to continue, this is definitely the middle book of the trilogy. By that I mean that while a reader could work out what's going on without having read book one although with some difficulty , the story does not have any type of ending in this book - that is presumably to come in book three. Birmingham writes with his usual style and pace, an While the first book in this series, "Without Warning", had an ending which wrapped up the plot lines of the book, but left enough intrigue to get the reader to continue, this is definitely the middle book of the trilogy. Birmingham writes with his usual style and pace, and he knows his subject when it comes to the modern military. He has pared the cast down from book one, some permanently, some because their story was not relevant to the ongoing events in this part of the trilogy. This, to me at least, had the effect of providing fewer "natural" pausing places, as one becomes more invested in the characters that do feature. The story picks up about 3 years after the ending of the first book and covers a relatively brief period a few weeks at most as opposed to the year covered in the first book. After America. John Birmingham This is an extraordinary novel of perseverance, survival, never taking the easy way out of just giving up. Only the strong will survive. The world is in chaos after a chemical attack decimated it. Some areas were hit, killing. It's inhabitants instantly. Other areas untouched. America has a new president, but others are fighting to squash his authority. Isalmic terrorist cells are fighting to control New York, aided by other mercenaries. Texas wants to control and i After America. Texas wants to control and is an obstacle to the President. This is an amazing read!!! I highly recommend!!! Another feather in Birminghams cap!!! Apr 13, Nance Roepke rated it did not like it. I didn't realize when I check this book out from the library that it was the second book in a series. In fact, I didn't realize that until I had finished the book. In other words, I had no trouble understanding what was going on from the very beginning. This is a post-apocalyptic world with the apocalypse starting in the United States and extending in different ways around the world. That is the start of the book. There are a number of different characters who all have separate stories going on I didn't realize when I check this book out from the library that it was the second book in a series. There are a number of different characters who all have separate stories going on within the same time frame. There is the president, a Polish man who is now a soldier in the United States, an American woman who was a special ops person and is now a consultant in England, an Hispanic man who has a homestead in the Texas territory and a black boy who was recruited as a jihadist. The chapters skip around between these characters. I found that very confusing in Game of Thrones but not here. And some of the stories were interesting to me. So why the 1 rating? I am not a huge fan of books in a series for the most part. But I have gotten into some of them. But there are different kinds of series. There are those with a main character but the stories are completely different other than having the same main character. There are those that have a story that continues but where it's not necessary to read all the books in the series. In other words each book has a conclusion at the end. And then there are those that require you to read all of the books because there is no conclusion until the very end of the series. That was the case with this book. It just of ended. Nothing at all was tied up, not even a little bit. So when it got to the final page and just ended abruptly, I wanted to throw the book across the room. I'm just glad that I didn't pay for it. Nov 07, Brent Morrison rated it it was ok. This series isn't bad. It is an interesting scenario, anyhow, a 'what if" plot that supposes America is hit by a mysterious event that somehow kills all the people and certain other mammals in most of the USA, Canada, and Mexico. It is at least quite honest in how it treats the possibilities, refreshingly not sparing any group for fear of offending them, and it is quite honest in showing exactly how much of the world might really act if this ever happened. My major complaint with the first two This series isn't bad. My major complaint with the first two novels in the trilogy that I have read so far? The usual jingoistic rah rah America attitudes of many of the characters, as well as the absolutely annoying insistence of certain characters for nitpicking about things that I cannot help but see as ridiculous in the situation we are supposed to believe in here. Constant harping about tiny details in the constitution, and the arrogance of killing large amounts of people because they supposedly just must recapture New York City. That center of the universe attitude might fly in this reality we live in, but in the context in these novels it just looks stupid and, well, arrogant. Decent plotting, though, and it is interesting enough to make me overlook the flaws because of wanting to see what happens next. Therefore I will definitely be trying book three as soon as I get a hold of it. Aug 16, Mike Klein rated it really liked it. OK so reading the second book of a series without reading the first one isn't the best choice--it's what I did. For the unrelated alternate history novel, see After America John Birmingham book. This article contains weasel words : vague phrasing that often accompanies biased or unverifiable information. Such statements should be clarified or removed. March Non-fiction book published in the U. Books portal Conservatism portal. The Washington Times. Retrieved March 30, The Spectator. Retrieved 1 April The New York Times. Categories : non-fiction books American history books American political books Books critical of modern liberalism in the United States Conservative media in the United States English-language books History books about the United States. Hidden categories: Articles with weasel words from March Articles with short description Short description with empty Wikidata description Books with missing cover. Namespaces Article Talk. Views Read Edit View history. 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The Barackracy, as Steyn puts it, is going to lead us as far and as fast as they can away from the American Dream. In twenty years like this Steyn predicts we'll be "living the American Nightmare, with large tracts of the country reduced to the favelas of Latin American, the rich fleeing for Bermuda Europe and all the American left imagined they could wrench money from the wealthy, or just print money if they had to, and provide endless nanny state happiness. Free medical care. Long vacations. Assured jobs with little hard work. Bliss and free lunches for all. And it even worked for a while in Europe, when there were between seven to ten young adults being taxed for each senior citizen. Then a funny thing happened. The Europeans stopped reproducing. It was as if all of Europe woke up one day having decided to commit suicide. In Germany, for example, one out of every three women is childless. And the women who do have a child frequently only have only one. So all too soon, across Europe there will be two young adults supporting every retired senior citizen. Oh, and did I mention the debt the two young adults will also have to pay off due to the ever profligate welfare state? Furthermore, Steyn points out how uncontrollable medical costs have been even for the most strictly controlled economies. In Canada the health budget "increased from nearly 35 percent In Ontario All this perfect storm of economic bad news is coming at the worst time possible, given our cultural state. As Steyn puts it, "the story of the last forty years is the mainstreaming of rock -star morality" p , not to mention the wreckage of traditional marriage. What will happen to all the children raised in fragmented families if the economy really collapses? This is an important book, compelling and at times frightening. I hope it will be widely read. View 2 comments. Aug 12, Andrew rated it it was amazing. I don't think I've enjoyed another book this much in at least the past year. It's hard to say whether I liked this or America Alone better, but both were excellent and are highly recommended. I have always enjoyed Mark Steyn's witty writing style. He'll make you laugh when you probably should be crying, given the grim topic. This book is no exception. His topic is the civilizational suicide being committed by Western nations not exempting America, as he did in his previous book. He argues that I don't think I've enjoyed another book this much in at least the past year. He argues that the United States is on a trajectory toward some of the same crises being faced by European nations such as Greece. While I think the timeline leading to such future events might be longer than he predicts, it's a scary scenario nonetheless. The release of this book was coincidentally synchronized with a downgrade in America's credit rating which he predicts and riots in Britain which he strongly suggests will happen. I hope he's wrong with some of his other predictions. I wasn't necessarily a big fan of his last two chapters. The second to last chapter was written as a letter from the future to someone from , but it was sometimes difficult to tell when he was talking about true events or whether he was making predictions about the future. The final chapter was good and contained a little more hope for the future than did the rest of the book, but I would have enjoyed more elaboration about his recipe for avoiding the decline he suggests is on its way. It easily gets 5 stars. View 1 comment. Feb 25, Dale rated it it was amazing. Besides being a clever little bit of the obvious, a Yogi Berra-type quote, it is also part of a scary thought about America itself that Mark Steyn points out in After America - America cannot keep doing what it is doing forever and hope to lead the world - it will stop. America cannot hope that a post-America world will be pleasant - as Steyn notes on page 14 " Now, he warns of the same sorts of danger happening to America itself - we will not be "America Alone" but something different - different culturally, maybe more than one country, maybe nothing but a hazy memory. Mark Steyn is truly one of the wittiest writers I have ever read. I have always enjoyed his columns, but in a larger format Steyn truly shines. He builds on what he has already written about so well that it almost becomes like an extended conversation with the man. He almost seamlessly ties together point after point. Steyn makes you laugh at the absurdity of the situation and then, while in mid-chuckle you stop and think, "Wait! That's not really funny at all. That's outrageous or sad, or scary. Aug 20, Roland Bruno rated it it was amazing Shelves: essay , non-fiction. A magnum-opus of observation on the decline of western civilization. I couldn't put it down. Beyond the cavalcade of evidence, both anecdotal and actual, Steyn carves out the heart of the belief system of the multi-cultural, moral relatavist and barbecues it. Steyn paints with a broad brush and while there are topics where he misses the greater picture, Peak Oil being a key one for me. Sep 21, Richard rated it it was amazing. What an enjoyable read, even as Mark Steyn lays out our stark future in no uncertain terms. Stein is deadly serious about the deep excrement in which we too-blithely reside. Niggling details like impending calamity aside, the book is so much fun. But many readers might want to keep a dictionary handy. While discussing the expansion of wealth, Steyn so effortlessly rips off a sentence like this [pp ]: "But then Mr. Peasant start remodeling the hovel, adding a rec room and indoor plu What an enjoyable read, even as Mark Steyn lays out our stark future in no uncertain terms. Peasant start remodeling the hovel, adding a rec room and indoor plumbing, replacing the emaciated old nag with a Honda Civic and driving to the mall in it, and the next thing you know, instead of just having an extra yard of mead every Boxing Day at the local tavern and adding a couple more pustules to the escutcheon with the local trollop, they begin taking vacations in Florida. But you don't always need a dictionary. This is clear enough: "Permanence is always an illusion. Mighty nations can be transformed mighty fast, especially when history comes a-calling. Put that aside and consider the essence of what he is saying. The blurb on the inside cover reads, "Optimistic about America's future? Don't be. Or it's Welcome to the Third World Nightmare And it's coming sooner than you think. Considering the subject matter and Steyn's outlook, it wasn't the darkness that bothered me so much, but I found the chapter hard to follow. Perhaps if Steyn had toned down the lexical pyrotechnics in this one chapter, his main points would have been more clear. In summary, an excellent book. Note: This review is for the page After America published September Goodreads shows this as being published in January and only pages long. I'm thinking there is a mistake in the listing. Goodreads' ISBN matches the one printed in my year , page copy. Goodreads' cover also matches the newer, longer copy I have. Sep 11, George rated it liked it Shelves: nook-st , lapl-org , non-fiction. From now on, it gets worse. Yet much of what he has to say makes too much sense. The incredible statistics and demographics he shares are enough, by themselves, to scramble your head. Probably the darkest age in history. Aug 23, Jennifer rated it liked it. It's rare that I rate a book before I'm done reading it, or that I give five stars to any book, let alone a political one I've liked a a lot of them, it's just that they aren't timeless , but I'm going to make an exception here. Mark Steyn has been compared to Cyrano de Bergerac, and it's really no exaggeration. Sep 20, Kelly rated it it was amazing Shelves: political- non-fiction , non-fiction , favorites. Mark Steyn is brilliant and incredibly funny. Every person in this country should read this book. One of the reviews on the back cover of the book is exactly what I wanted to write here View all 6 comments. Oct 10, Keith rated it really liked it Shelves: social-commentary , political-science , ebooks , Having just read Niall Ferguson's Civilization The West and the Rest , which details ways in which the West came to dominate the world, as well as how quickly it might disappear, I followed with Mark Steyn's latest which details the details of our decline. Steyn addresses the problem of American decline in great depth but with great wit. The book's blurb line is far too accurate as well: "Optimistic about America's future? Don't Be. Much of what we hav Having just read Niall Ferguson's Civilization The West and the Rest , which details ways in which the West came to dominate the world, as well as how quickly it might disappear, I followed with Mark Steyn's latest which details the details of our decline. Much of what we have to fear can be seen today in Europe: a declining birthrate, uninhibited government spending, an unsustainable debt level, an ever growing government sector that makes clients out of citizens as it promises more and more "benefits. Steyn's metaphor for much of this is H. The difference is that Steyn posits that the time traveller had only to travel 80 years into the future, i. It's a conceit to be sure but once surrounded by a wealth of anecdotal detail much of the conceit seems relevant. After odd pages of unsettling analysis Steyn finishes with a call to action, a manifesto centered on undoing things - decentralize, de-governmentalize, de-regulate, de-monopolize, de-credentialize, de-complicate. In the book Steyn observes, in an echo of Tocqueville, "big government makes small citizens," surely an end not to be desired. Change has to be recognized as needful and there are many who reject such tales of decline witness Adam Gopnik in his review of Ferguson's book, The New Yorker, Sept. View all 4 comments. Oct 19, Kenny rated it really liked it Shelves: current-events. Other reviews have parsed out the main point of this book, which is, in a word, chilling. I'll not add to that bulk, but instead I will simply quote a paragraph from After America , which for me says it all: Conservatives often talk about "small government," which, in a sense, is framing the issue in leftist terms: they're for Big Government--and, when you're arguing for the samll alternative, it's easy to sound pinched and mean and grudging. But small government gives you big freedoms--and Big Go Other reviews have parsed out the main point of this book, which is, in a word, chilling. But small government gives you big freedoms--and Big Government leaves you with very little freedom. The opposite of Big Government is not small government, but Big Liberty. The bailout and the stimulus and the budget and the trillion-dollar deficits are not merely massive transfers from the most dynamic and productive sector to the least dynamic and productive. When governments annex a huge chunk of the economy, they also annex a huge chunk of individual liberty. You fundamentally change the relationship between the citizen and the state into something closer to that of junkie and pusher--and you make it bery difficult to ever change back. In the end, it's not about money, but about something more fundamental. Yes, you can tax people to the hilt and give them "free" health care and "free" homes and "free" food. But in doing so you turn them into, if not yet slaves, then pets. And that's the nub of it: Big Government leads to small liberty, and to small men. If a year-old is a child, as President Obama says; if a year-old hair-dressercan retire and live at the stat's expense for over half her adult life, as the Government of Greece says, then you are no longer free. Not when you're owned by the government. Jan 21, Rhonda rated it liked it Shelves: read-in Second book I read by this author THIS book is now about how America is on a fast track to do the same thing, America is in a downward spiral The book starts with a scenario of a man in the last nineteenth century, in an ordinary home around Look at his surroundings. Then fast forward him in a time machine just 60 Second book I read by this author Then fast forward him in a time machine just 60 years, to , and he would be astonished with all the changes Just imagine the differences these 'machines' and medicines all made to our lives Other than a few small changes, like a CD player and cup holders in the car, icemakers, etc. What used to take short periods of time for getting a drug to the public, now takes forever to get through regulations We need to lessen the amount of government interference in our lives Favorite Quotes: "Education is the biggest single structural defect in the U. No country needs to send a majority never mind 'all,' as is Pres. Obama's ambition of its children to college, and no country should: not every child has the aptitude to benefit from college, and not every child who has wants to go, or needs to. For most who wind up there, college is a waste of time, and money, and life. Hacks pretend to teach, slackers pretend to learn, and employers pretend it's a qualification. I long ago gave up marveling at how little American education asks of its inmates. By universalizing university, you let K off the hook. College becomes the new high schoolwhich is exactly the opposite of what a dynamic, efficient society would be doing: middle school should be the new high school. Early-year education is the most critical; if you screw up the first eight grades, keeping the kid in class till he's thirty isn't going to do much to fix things. Dec 27, Tom rated it it was amazing. Read this book. You'll laugh a lot. You'll cry a lot. You'll wet your pants. I really don't want to believe that we're as far down the path of ruin as Steyn says we are. But the facts he presents, and the logic behind his analyses is hard to argue with. We are soooo screwed, I'm afraid, and it will all become glaringly clear to everyone sooner than anyone imagines. We are living in the waning days of a golden "empire", and even though the signs and portents abound around us, most of us are as una Read this book. We are living in the waning days of a golden "empire", and even though the signs and portents abound around us, most of us are as unaware of the approaching dark age as were Romans years ago. Yes, it's that dire. What can you do about it? Not much really. Enjoy the ride while you can, because there's a boulder on the tracks around one of the bends just ahead. Oct 08, Deborah Spencer rated it did not like it. Apr 02, Adam Balshan rated it really liked it Shelves: politics. The linearity of writing is of slightly lesser quality, but the wordplay and directness deserves a standing ovation. Everyone concerned with dwindling liberty in America should read this book. It isn't quite the masterpiece America Alone was, primarily because that book was a diagnosis of the world as it was, covering the Decline of the West and backed by a nigh-irrefutable sub-theme of demographic failure. After America , on the other hand, is partially a predictive book. It foreshadows the Fall of the West, and paints a grim picture. Steyn may well be right as to the political abysses we are about to careen into, but one element missing from his book is the role of the Judeo-Christian ethic. It is one of the most central, formative aspects of Western culture. It need not have been included in his previous book, but here it did require at least a sub-theme: the moving of God will determine the world's end, and a book with the word "Armageddon" in the subtitle should have had some reference to the God who will enact it. Even if Mr. Steyn's predictions do come true of the West, the Kingdom of God will still march on until the appointed End arrives. And it would likely move to China, where 1 out of 14 are now born-again Christians; Steyn talks much of the Chinese menace without even mentioning that fact, and how it would markedly affect their national character in the long-run. Nevertheless, the book is fairly amazing, and rests high on the ladder of worthy political commentary. I must have underlined one-eighth of the book. It might, one day, even find its way into the Western Civilizational canon, as an eyewitness testimony of the end--in an Indian public library. Jan 17, Greg Perciak rated it really liked it. Like the paranoid who occasionally has something genuine to fear, Mark Steyn is the alarmist with something to be alarmed about, and he writes about it with a healthy dose of gallows humor. We're looting the future to bribe the present. And the demography is not in our favor - with birthrates being what they are, we're running out of people to stick with the bill. Worse yet, big government makes for small citizens, as the nanny state makes more of our decisions, drains our ambition, and assumes Like the paranoid who occasionally has something genuine to fear, Mark Steyn is the alarmist with something to be alarmed about, and he writes about it with a healthy dose of gallows humor. Worse yet, big government makes for small citizens, as the nanny state makes more of our decisions, drains our ambition, and assumes responsibilities that once belonged to the individual. Here's a typical passage from : "In September, the 10th anniversary of a murderous strike at the heart of America's most glittering city was commemorated at a building site: the Empire State Building was finished in 18 months during a depression, but in the 21st century the global superpower cannot put up two replacement skyscrapers within a decade. On Thursday, Mayor Bloomberg announced that there is "no chance of it being open on time. What's one more endlessly delayed, inefficient, over-bureaucratized construction project in a sclerotic republic? Nov 20, Jeff rated it liked it. I'm a big Mark Steyn fan; love reading his essays and listening to him occasionally on the radio. This book was a bit of a disappointment in that a lot of the material is nearly identical to some of his previous essays - and in some cases word-for-word identical - so that I wasn't reading anything new. I don't have much argument against the message, and there was a least one laugh-out-loud moment in the book, but nonetheless I wasn't really able to "get into" this one. The best point he makes is I'm a big Mark Steyn fan; love reading his essays and listening to him occasionally on the radio. The best point he makes is when he postulates a time-traveller that starts in and travels forward 60 years to , and then another 60 years to The improvements in everyday live between and are enormous, whereas the differences between and are much less so. His observation is that our rate of "progress" is actually slowing down with time, as American atrophies into a more centrally-controlled, federally-regulated nanny state. Mar 08, Hindrik Hettema rated it did not like it. A very sad book by a very frustrated person. It cannot even be called cherry-picking, Mark really only has eyes for his cherries Sep 04, Brook rated it it was amazing. I admire Mark Steyn for writing with both humor and erudition on such a disheartening topic as the decline of western civilization. After completion, I was pleased to give my copy to an open-minded education graduate student whose own reading choice was "Pedagogy of the Oppressed". Oct 15, Dan Glover rated it really liked it Shelves: social-political-criticism , economics. To summarize my appreciation for this book, I echo the sentiment of Ann Coulter in that only Mark Steyn could make you laugh this hard while reading a book on the death of America. However, unlike Coulter, my praise for Steyn's astute observation and critique of the ills must be counter-weighted by my disappointment and downright puzzlement at what Steyn proposes in place of the status quo. With a problem this bad, the solution must be far more radical than Steyn proposes. For these reasons, I g To summarize my appreciation for this book, I echo the sentiment of Ann Coulter in that only Mark Steyn could make you laugh this hard while reading a book on the death of America. For these reasons, I give him 4 stars for this critique and elucidation of the problems but only 3 for his answers to them more on this later. In his previous book, America Alone see my review , Steyn argued from demographics that the Islamic world was taking over the west and that the U. In After America, Steyn looks at the world through the lens of economics and he determines that the U. Since Steyn published America Alone, a lot has happened. Obama was voted in by a star-struck, celebrity worshipping, fiscally suicidal U. But unlike most party-line republicans, Steyn recognizes that, while Obama has done much to worsen and hasten the U. In fact, the best America could hope for from a majority of republican politicians and presidential candidates would be to slow the car from 90 to 70 miles per hour as it speeds toward the cliff. What the U. The umbilical cord that runs from the over-weaning nanny state to citizens everywhere needs to be cut and tied until it withers and drops off. People need to come to value personal liberty and the resultant responsibility for their own well being once again instead of looking to the state for everything from unemployment income to health care to education to old age security to grants for the arts to We need to ditch the mindset that sees the left-leaning media's latest panic-crusade and responds with the knee-jerk reaction of "there oughta be a program for that". The problem as Steyn sees it is that, while the U. Sure, the president or congress or senate might change, but the bureaucracy never does. The system is broken and continues to be so. The way Americans and citizens of other western nations view the state needs to change. The federal government is the most powerful institution in the U. This was not what the founding fathers envisioned for the republic. They believed the sphere of family should have the most authority, then church and other voluntary associations of citizens, then local communities, then individual states and then, last and least of all, the federal government. When the state becomes so very big, as it has, it creates small citizens. The more powerful and larger the state, the weaker and smaller its citizens. As we have come to expect from Steyn, the book is full of sharp verbal barbs, snappy shots and devastating blows and his scathing critique of the ethos of present-day America and the west is nearly spot-on. He ably examines the deterioration of family, community and the can-do spirit of an America gone-by. Not that Steyn has no good advice to avoid what is surely certain ruin if there is no radical and immediate change of direction. In the last chapter, he does propose some crucial and necessary sea changes to western society. And yet, even he is not radical enough. There are some glaring inconsistencies with his approach. For example, you can't both radically scale back government and sever the over inflated borrow- spend Keynesian mentality of both bureaucracy and the general public at the same time as carrying on a global "war on terror" which, as it turns out, is primarily an excuse to secure cheap oil for the average American consumer who believes that the constitution somewhere protects their right to cheap foreign oil. Radically cutting government spending while continuing to be the world's beat cop through a massive military spend more than the next several highest military spending countries put together isn't possible. The U. Steyn talks about this as well, but his solution is that the US demand compensation from the rest of the UN countries which benefit from their security services. This is about as intelligent a solution as it is likely that the DND will start receiving multi-billion dollar free will donations from the EU. Get real. Along with the domestic big gov't nannyism and bloated, hippopotamic bureaucracy, it was foreign military-industrial imperialism that got the US into their massive economic woes in the first place and the only reason many nations went along with it was that the nation instigating it was the financial powerhouse of the globe. The phrase, "not any more" applies here in multiple ways. The logical conclusion of Steyn's observations and the most clear and decisive thing the average American citizen could do to begin to transform and reform the US back into the constitutional republic it was intended by the founders to be is to vote for Ron Paul as the next president. I kept waiting for Steyn to draw this conclusion himself but Paul doesn't even get a passing mention in this book - a glaring oversight as Steyn spends some time talking about the Tea Party, the very grass roots movement which wouldn't exist without Ron Paul. That's the conclusion I'm left with in light of Steyn's disparaging remarks about Paul in the media. Steyn needs to pick between US domestic fiscal and social survival OR extension of the "global war on terror" and an expansion of US global policing against radical Islam and every other interest which threatens to compete with US interests around the world because he can't have both. The former would mean getting one's own house in order, in part, by bringing home the military presence from the four corners of the globe. Just as Cold War thinking, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, created a certain ideological clarity, this clean division between the democrats and the autocrats is invigorating in its simplicity. The real world, alas, is rarely so clean. Kagan acknowledges that the United States sometimes has to support authoritarian regimes to further its interests. But, like the Cold Warriors of old who were slow to recognize the sharp divisions between China and the Soviet Union , he tends to see potential enemies as a common front. These are all autocracies, but is their alliance really based on a shared horror of democratic intervention, as Kagan believes? As Bill Emmott points out, the S. Kagan may well be correct to argue that the Chinese see themselves as a traditional rising power, like Germany and Japan in the nineteenth century, both of which stressed military as much as economic strength. The question for the United States and other democracies is how to keep autocratic powers safely contained. Compared with Russia and China, the United States still has overwhelming military might. But how useful is that as an instrument of policy? Emmott points out that things are very different from the days when imperial Germany and Japan started throwing their weight around. A rising power no longer needs a strong military to secure natural resources. They can be bought on open markets, or acquired from unsavory regimes in exchange for easy credit. And the democratic countries have business interests that are at odds with a staunch opposition to autocracies that have poor human-rights records. We like those cheap Chinese imports. Nor is it so clear that military muscle is a better way to defend democratic interests than international institutions. Both are needed, to be sure. But Kagan himself observes that Russian and Chinese leaders are right to worry about those institutions. About twenty years ago, there was a common belief that military power meant little, that the soft power of Germany and Japan would rule the world. This was a mistake. He does, however, make a significant point that is overlooked by those who believe that the combined blessings of trade, capitalism, and rising prosperity lead inexorably to liberal democracy. And this is the international appeal of autocracy. The Soviet Union, after an initial spurt of industrialization, was a model of economic failure. Contemporary China, so far, is not. Some commentators, like Mark Leonard, see this as a revolutionary intellectual breakthrough. More worrying is the allure it has for technocrats, businessmen, architects, and politicians even in the democratic West. Who would turn down the chance to redesign entire cities without public interference? Whereas American diplomats talk about regime change, their Chinese counterparts talk about respect for sovereignty and the diversity of civilizations. Parag Khanna is inclined in this direction. Many of those with a social conscience are in exile, or in jail. Still, advice can be critical, up to a point. The Chinese thinkers Leonard interviewed tend to be either neoliberals, who want more capitalism, or leftists, who want more socialism. He quotes a Malaysian diplomat where does he find these people? To Robert Kagan, the increasingly warm relations between India and the United States, symbolized by a nuclear pact in , are a sign that the democracies are beginning to line up together. But things changed after the Cold War. India no longer needs to play the United States off against the Soviet Union. Instead, it needs the United States as a counterweight against China. India being a democracy, Khanna rather disapproves of it. If anything, the Japanese are even more suspicious than the Indians are of a resurgent China. For the first time since the eighteen-seventies, Japan has a serious Asian rival, and politicians on both sides of the East China Sea are still picking at the wounds of the last great war. When it is in the interest of the Chinese government to stir up nationalism, usually for domestic reasons, memories of Japanese atrocities are recalled, and this invariably provokes nationalistic counterblasts from the Japanese. However fast the economies of new powers are growing, then, forecasts of their world domination leave out a great deal. China has a demographic problem—too many boys—compounding its potentially catastrophic ecological problems.

After America by John Birmingham, Paperback | Barnes & Noble®

Top charts. New arrivals. After America The Disappearance Book 2. John Birmingham Aug Switch to the audiobook. The world changed forever when a massive wave of energy slammed into North America and wiped out 99 percent of the population. As the United States lay in ruins, chaos erupted across the globe. Now, while a skeleton American government tries to reconstruct the nation, swarms of pirates and foreign militias plunder the lawless wasteland where even the president is fair prey. In New York City, armies of heavily armed predators hold sway—and hold off a struggling U. In Texas, a rogue general bent on secession leads a brutal campaign against immigrants. And in England, a U. More by John Birmingham See more. The Shattered Skies. John Birmingham. Humanity's last remaining heroes must rebuild and protect civilization after a long dormant enemy shattered their once-peaceful empire in this thrilling sequel to The Cruel Stars. The Sturm, a group of "species purists" intent on destroying any human with genetic or cybernetic enhancements, returned from the far reaches of Dark Space to wage a war against humanity. Though their victory seemed inevitable, a small group of reluctant heroes managed to beat back the invading force. Now left with the remains of a crippled civilization, they must work together to rebuild--and to stand guard, in case those weren't the only enemies hiding in the dark The Cruel Stars: A Novel. For a better shopping experience, please upgrade now. Javascript is not enabled in your browser. Enabling JavaScript in your browser will allow you to experience all the features of our site. Learn how to enable JavaScript on your browser. NOOK Book. Audio MP3 on CD. The world changed forever when a massive wave of energy slammed into North America and wiped out 99 percent of the population. As the United States lay in ruins, chaos erupted across the globe. Now, while a skeleton American government tries to reconstruct the nation, swarms of pirates and foreign militias plunder the lawless wasteland where even the president is fair prey. In New York City, armies of heavily armed predators hold sway—and hold off a struggling U. In Texas, a rogue general bent on secession leads a brutal campaign against immigrants. And in England, a U. He lives at the beach with his wife, daughter, son, and two cats. The hard work and unseasonal humidity of Lower Manhattan had left the workman drenched in sweat, and Kipper could feel the shirt sticking to his own back. Having paid homage to his bowling-ball-sized muscles, the workman reached out one enormous, calloused paw to shake hands with the forty-forth president of the United States. This guy was obviously the clown of the bunch. With one of those really tiny pianos? He cracks me up. That would have set his detail right off. But after a few moments the uproar receded. Doubtless one or two of his detail were watching her closely from behind their darkened sunglasses. He caught her eye and favored her with an indulgent grin by which he meant to convey a sense of amused pity. She obviously did not fit in with this gang of roughnecks. This nation of castaways and lost souls all had their stories. And you had to wonder what paths had brought biceps guy and this quiet woman to New York three years after the Wave had dissipated as mysteriously as it had arrived. The stillness of the ruins soon returned. Grit and debris crunched underfoot as the party picked its way through the wreckage of Wall Street. Only the sound of the pigeons, which had returned to the city in plague numbers, broke the silence. The ecosystem within the Wave-affected area seemed to be outstripping all scientific predictions in terms of recovery. Wood chips and piles of tree branches lined the streets. The buzzing roar of chain saws joined in with the heavy metal crash of machinery. Much of the cleanup work in places like Manhattan pertained just as much to brush clearance as to vehicle pileups or burned-out buildings. There was life here, of a sort. He could smell it in the fresh-cut timber of an island fast reverting to its original, heavily wooded state. Away from the raucous cheers of the salvage crew, Kipper fell deep into the well of his own thoughts. He took in the sight of a Mister Softee ice cream van that had speared into the front of the Citibank at the corner of Wall and Front streets. A couple of bicycles lay crushed under its wheels, and jagged shards of glass had ripped through the scorched, filthy rags that once had clothed the riders. They had simply Disappeared like every other soul in this empty city, like everyone across America four years ago. He was a new guy. You had to wonder what that was doing to his head. Water Street was busier. The silence of the necropolis, a vast crypt for millions of the Disappeared, seemed to press the air out of him. Kip turned back to gaze down the shadowed canyon of the old financial district. The intersection of Water and Wall was a wrecking yard of yellow cabs, private cars, and one armored van that had been broadsided by a dump truck and knocked completely over. The impact had smashed open both rear doors, and a few buff-colored sacks of old money still lay unwanted on the ground. None of the salvagers bothered with the dead currency, which long since had been replaced by the less valuable New American Dollar. They had returned to attacking the tangle of metal with earthmoving equipment, sledgehammers, chains, and pure grunt. It was the loudest noise in the city. Kip shook his head and turned back. A large soiled and tattered American flag hung loosely from the Roman columns of the neoclassical structure, held in place by creeping vines as much as by nylon ropes. Kipper had never been to Wall Street, or New York City for that matter, and photographs of the Street always made it appear larger than life. Now, here, in the presence of what had been the most powerful engine of capitalism on the planet, it felt small and almost claustrophobic. Down at the end of the street he could see a church of some sort, dwarfed by the skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan. More than a few nut jobs had proclaimed their own end of days interpretations of the Wave. For his part, he still believed that there had to be a rational explanation. But what that explanation was, nobody knew. He indulged himself in a melancholy sigh. The party was small for a presidential caravan: just Kipper, Jed Culver—Karen Milliner, and half a dozen security men in dark coveralls and heavy combat rigs. There was no getting rid of them. An army of looters was currently denuding the eastern seaboard of everything from sports cars and heavy equipment to computer game systems and jewelry. Kip often found himself contemplating the lot of Native Americans when whitey turned up. An entire continent was ripe for the taking, and nobody seemed to care that a small number of locals already had a claim on the place. The irony, or tragedy he supposed, was that most of the Native American population had been wiped out by the Wave. There was too much to do just keeping their heads above water.

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