Haynes Johnson – författare

The authors show in detail how 'The System' has corrupted America's political institutions. They take as an example the Clinton health care reform initiative - the most ambitious call for US government action since the 1960s. Granted exclusive and unprecedented access to closed-door meetings by Bill and Hillary Clinton, Senators Bob Dole, Edward Kennedy and Newt Gingrich amongst others and using these meetings and the health care plan the authors give a blow by blow destruction of a policy that aimed to please everybody and ended by satisfying no-one due to special interstate pressure groups, party political bickering, political gamesmanship and the sheer inertia of the American 'system'.

Over the course of two years, the Washington-based Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist crisscrossed the United States, talking to bankers, gang leaders, schoolteachers, businessmen, farmers—even President Bill Clinton—about the current state of America. The result, a powerful portrait of Americans at a pivotal point in their history, raises tough questions that continue to resonate.Nationwide, Americans faced the legacy of the Reagan Eighties (disappearing jobs, soaring crime, racial polarization) with immense apprehension and a pervasive skepticism that colored their attitudes about politicians and the political system itself. At the same time, people in all walks of life were eager to take on the challenges of the Nineties. "I do not feel that I have been writing the obituary of the American Dream," writes Johnson in the final chapter of Divided We Fall; "I believe I have been writing about an interlude in the reclaiming of that Dream."Indeed, with this brilliant document, Johnson urges and inspires us to join together, face the challenge of change, and take the brave gamble to reclaim the American Dream.

National bestseller: In this brilliantly readable book, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist chronicles the Reagan decade, when America fell from dominant world power to struggling debtor nation and when optimism turned to foreboding. In human terms and living case histories, Haynes Johnson captures the drama and tragedy of an era nurtured by greed and a morality that found virtue in not getting caught."It is morning again in America," Reagan's campaign commercials told us, and for too long we embraced that convenient lie. Indeed, the problems that came to plague us in that decade are with us even more today, as Johnson memorably demonstrates in—his afterword, "Notes on an Era," written especially for this new paperback reissue. This book will remain a signature work of political analysis for years to come.