Running on Empty or The Origins of Totalitarianism

Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do about It

Author: Peter G Peterson

The national bestseller, described by Tom Brokaw as the “wake-up call we cannot ignore,” with a new preface by the author Acclaimed by all sides of the political spectrum, Peter Peterson's Running on Empty not only traces the deterioration of America’s finances but offers solutions. This national bestseller is required reading for everyone concerned with America’s long-term economic survival. In clear and concise prose, Peterson offers America not only a vision but the practical steps by which to ensure our children’s economic future. Running on Empty is not only a warning, it is also a manifesto calling for the next administration to finally confront a deep and disturbing problem that politicians of all parties have insisted on ignoring for too long.

The New York Times - Christopher Caldwell

With precision and punch, Mr. Peterson's Running on Empty lays out why we are in a lousy position to dig ourselves out of this hole.

The Washington Post - Ted Van Dyk

Unlike most analytic and policy-prescriptive books, Peter G. Peterson's Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It is lively and plainly written. A former Cabinet member, a lifelong Republican, a business and financial executive and chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, Peterson is a certified establishmentarian. But he also is a Nebraska straight talker who calls 'em as he sees 'em and has done so consistently regarding the structural federal budget deficits that threatened us in the 1990s and do so again now.

Publishers Weekly

For years, Peterson, secretary of commerce under Nixon and author of Gray Down, has been a compelling Cassandra, warning that the mix of growing debt, an aging population, and deficits in Social Security and Medicare portend disaster. Now, he laments, Republicans pursue reckless supply-side economics and Democrats, assuming a repeal of Bush's tax cuts would enable new government spending, are unwilling to consider limits on entitlements. Citing study after study, the author shows that it is a failure of leadership, not knowledge, that has let deficits loom. Beyond that, add the new burdens imposed by September 11-and the fact that European countries, aging like us, likely will have less money for security and international aid. Peterson attacks 10 partisan myths, among them that means-testing federal benefits will shred the safety net; that the elderly are poorer than children, that Americans are overtaxed and that using tax cuts to shrink government can work. What went wrong? He blames interest groups, individualism, short-termitis and generational change. Peterson offers concrete solutions: among them: index Social Security to prices, not wages; use the federal employees' health plan as a model; force Congress to include unfunded retirement obligations in its balance sheet; and pursue more nonpartisan politics, such as free TV time during campaigns. A self-described "fat cat," Peterson is willing to bear an "affluence test" for Social Security; he challenges leaders to revive JFK's call for civic responsibility. Agent, Andrew Wylie. (July 14) Forecast: The punditocracy will embrace and debate this book. Though Peterson has harsh words for all, George W. Bush's opponents could seize on the charge that Bush and his Congress "have presided over the biggest, most reckless deterioration of America's finances in history." Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Table of Contents:

	Preface: Why This Book Now?	ix
Chapter 1	Bankrupt Parties, Bankrupt Nation	3
Chapter 2	Why Deficits Matter to You and Your Future	29
Chapter 3	The Challenge at Home: The Aging of America	56
Chapter 4	The Challenge Abroad: A Dangerous World	80
Chapter 5	How the Democrats Got us Into This Mess (with Republican Help)	107
Chapter 6	How the Republicans Got us Much Deeper (with Democratic Help)	130
Chapter 7	Ten Partisan Myths	147
Chapter 8	Why America is Choosing the Wrong Future	170
Chapter 9	How we Can Rebuild Our Future--and Our Politics	194
Chapter 10	A Letter to the Rising Generation	226
	A Note on Sources	235
	Acknowledgments	241

Interesting book: Great Ribs Book or The Joy of Coffee

The Origins of Totalitarianism

Author: Hannah Arendt

Generally regarded as the definitive work on totalitarianism, this book is an essential component of any study of twentieth-century political movements. Arendt was one of the first to recognize that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were two sides of the same coin rather than opposing philosophies of Right and Left. “With the Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt emerges as the most original and profound-therefore the most valuable-political theoretician of our times” (New Leader). Index.

Library Journal

Schocken's is the first hardcover edition of Arendt's 1951 volume to be available in decades. The book begins its study with European anti-Semitism in the 1800s and moves up to Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany, which the author fled in the 1930s. This edition sports a new introduction by Pulitzer Prize winner Samantha Powers. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.