Through an examination of the lives of several Americans and leading public figures over the past three decades, Packer portrays a superpower in danger of coming apart at the seams, its elites no longer elite, its institutions no longer working, its ordinary people left to improvise their own schemes for success and salvation.

"A genius at devising civil protests and political maneuvers, Samuel Adams forced Britain into coercive military measures that ultimately led to America's irreversible split from the empire. He was behind nearly every major protest over British rule, and his pioneering tactics of civil disobedience outfoxed the leading ministers in England." "Adams was the most influential political writer in colonial America and he used this power to guide Americans...

Examines the intellectual deterioration of American politics, from Ronald Reagan to Dan Quayle, from George W. Bush to Sarah Palin, to its apotheosis in Donald J. Trump.

Mercenary by name and by nature, Carson is a Lakota Sioux who stays to himself and never keeps women around long enough for anything emotional to develop. But working with his friend Cash Crier on a complex murder investigation provides Carson with another kind of fun: shocking Cash's sweet but traditional secretary, Carlie Blair, with tales of his latest conquests.

Chronicles the author's attempts to keep the Catholic Church from granting her former husband, Congressman Joseph Kennedy, an annulment of their twelve-year marriage; discussing the experiences of other women who have struggled with this issue, and looking at the uses and frequency of annulment in the U.S.

"Kurt Argento, an ex-Detroit street cop who can't let injustice go--and who has the fighting skills to back up his idealism. If he sees a young girl being dragged into an alley, he's going to rescue her and cause some damage. When he does just that in a small corrupt Missouri town, he's brutally beaten and thrown into a maximum-security prison. Julie Wakefield, a grad student who happens to be the governor's daughter, is about to take a tour of the...