It’s not an exaggeration to say that middle-class Americans are an endangered species and that the American Dream of a secure, comfortable standard of living has become as outdated as an Edsel with an eight-track player. That the United States of America is in danger of becoming a third world nation.

The evidence is all around us:

Our industrial base is vanishing, taking with it the kind of jobs that have formed the backbone of our economy for more than a century; our education system is in shambles, making it harder for tomorrow’s workforce to acquire the information and training it needs to land good twenty-first century jobs; our infrastructure—our roads, our bridges, our sewage and water, our transportation and electrical systems—is crumbling; our economic system has been reduced to recurring episodes of Corporations Gone Wild; our political system is broken, in thrall to a small financial elite using the power of the checkbook to control both parties.

And America’s middle class, the driver of so much of our economic success and political stability, is rapidly disappearing, forcing us to confront the fear that we are slipping as a nation – that our children and grandchildren will enjoy fewer opportunities and face a lower standard of living than we did.

It’s the dark flipside of the American Dream – an American Nightmare of our own making.

Arianna Huffington, who, with the must-read Huffington Post, has her finger on the pulse of America, unflinchingly tracks the gradual demise of America as an industrial, political, and economic leader. In the vein of her fiery bestseller Pigs at the Trough, Third World America points fingers, names names, and details who’s killing the American Dream.

Finally, calling on the can-do attitude that is part of America’s DNA, Huffington shows precisely what we need to do to stop our freefall and keep America from turning into a third world nation.

Third World America is a must-read for anyone disturbed by our country’s steady descent from 20th century superpower to backwater banana republic.

“Arianna Huffington is one of the very few people in America committed to say things the way they are and to expose the monstrous elephants in the room ignored by the dominant discourse. Even rarer, she does so in a lively, engaging, and, mostly, charming way.” -Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author The Black Swan

“With great passion and insight, Arianna tells it like it is. Blending outrage and optimism – indignation at how America’s crony capitalists have wrecked the nation’s great middle class, and unremitting hope that our people will rise and put things right – she explains what’s happened and what must be done. Here, clearly, is a book for our times.” -Robert B. Reich, Professor of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, and former U.S. Secretary of Labor

“An alarming account of the plight of the American middle class.”-Joseph Stiglitz, professor of economics at Columbia University and Nobel Laureater