Reader’s Corner

We are pleased to make note of the official publication of Bill Kauffman’s Bye Bye Miss American Empire, in part because Orion published part of it (”Bye Bye Miss American Empire,” July/August 2007), and too because it is a terrific book. James Howard Kunstler said of it, “History doesn’t stand still, no matter how many times you sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ Bill Kauffman brings an antic verve to the sobering question of America’s ability to hang together as one nation. He correctly perceives that the end of one story is the beginning of a whole new one.”

The book addresses one way people deal with some fundamental, underlying issues, that is, seceding from the U.S. and starting over with a new political entity. Certainly worth thinking about, and Bill Kauffman makes doing so delightful reading. As the publisher says,

The American Empire is dying, says Bill Kauffman in this incisive, eye-opening investigation into modern-day secession-the next radical idea poised to enter mainstream discourse. And those rising up to topple that empire are a surprising mix of conservatives, liberals, regionalists, and independents who-from movement to movement-may share few political beliefs but who have one thing in common: a sense that our nation has grown too large, and too powerfully centralized, to stay true to its founding principles.