Stephen Marche Knihy

Drawing on sophisticated predictive models and nearly two hundred interviews with experts, a journalist plainly breaks down the looming threats to the United States, in this must-read for anyone concerned about the future of its people, its land, and its government.

"On a small two-lane bridge in a rural county that loathes the federal government, the US Army uses lethal force to end a stand-off with hard-right militias, or anti-government patriots. Inside an ordinary diner, a disaffected young man with a handgun takes aim at the American president stepping in for impromptu photo-op, and a bullet splits the hyper-partisan country into violently opposed mourners and revelers. In New York City, a category 2 hurricane plunges entire neighborhoods underwater and creates millions of refugees overnight, a blow that comes on the heels of a devastating financial crash and years of catastrophic droughts, and tips America over the edge into ruin. These nightmarish scenarios are just three of the five possibilities most likely to spark devastating chaos in the United States that are brought to life here. Drawing upon sophisticated predictive models and nearly two hundred interviews with experts, military leaders, law enforcement officials, agricultural specialists, environmentalists, war historians, and political scientists, journalist Stephen Marche predicts the terrifying future collapse that so many of us do not want to see unfolding in front of our eyes. Marche has spoken with soldiers and counter-insurgency experts about what it would take to control the population of the United States, and the battle plans for the next civil war have already been drawn up. And not by novelists. By colonels"--Book jacket flap

The narrative centers on Mikey Ricci, a disillusioned political operative, and Martha Kass, the tip supervisor for the New York Times. In 2023, Ricci manages a third-party candidate with a refreshing centrist platform, challenging the entrenched political landscape shaped by the 2016 and 2020 elections. As they confront the overwhelming influence of major parties, media, and dark money, the candidate's authentic message begins to resonate with the public, highlighting the struggle for genuine political change in America.

Writing is, and always will be, an act defined by failure. The best plan is to just get used to it. Failure is a topic discussed in every creative writing department in the world, but this is the book every beginning writer should have on their shelf to prepare them--which is to say, to console them in their misery. Less a guide to writing and more a guide to how to simply keep on going, On Writing and Failure: Or, On the Peculiar Perseverance Required to Endure the Life of a Writer describes the defining role played by rejection in literary endeavors and contemplates failure as the essence of the writer's life. Along with his own history of rejection, Marche offers an historical framework--from Ovid's exile and Dostoevsky's mock execution to more contemporary tribulations--through which to consider rejection, and addresses the impact of the widespread decline of humanism on the twenty-first century writing life.

Failure is the body of a writer's life. Success is only ever an attire.