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Crown
March 2012
On Sale: February 21, 2012
320 pages
ISBN: 0307952525
EAN: 9780307952523
Kindle: B00540PA4C
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Political
Former senator Russ Feingold looks at institutional failures, both domestic and abroad, since the 9/11 terrorist attacks and proposes steps to be takenβby the government and by individualsβto ensure that the next ten years are focused on solving the international problems that threaten America. In While America Sleeps, Russ Feingold details our nationβs collective failure to respond properly to the challenges posed by the post-9/11 era. Oversimplification of complicated new problems as well as the cynical exploitation of the fears generated by 9/11 have undermined our ability to adjust effectively to Americaβs new place in the world. This has weakened our efforts to protect American lives, our national security, and our constitutional values. Ranging from institutional failures to βget it rightβ by Congress, the executive branch, and the media to the way we have spoken of the war on terror, the nature of Islam, and American exceptionalism, too often we have not made the best choices in confronting, in Churchillβs words, the βnew conditions under which we now have to dwell.β Senator Feingold explores the way in which the American public has been fed inadequate information
or mere slogans to explain 9/11, Al Qaeda, and related events. This compares unfavorably with the candor often associated with, for example, FDRβs fireside chats during World War II. Lumping Al Qaeda into a catch-all category known as βbad guys,β failing to make it clear that Islam itself is not a threat to our way of life, and underestimating the extreme difficulty of fully invading individual countries as a way to root out international terrorism are examples of this misdirection. Moreover, our general inability to keep our eyes on the international ball seems to have grown even worse in the years following 9/11. More than ten years after one of the greatest wake-up calls in human history, our nation seems to have again grown complacent about the issues that suddenly seemed so urgent immediately after 9/11. While America Sleeps suggests ways in which we can awaken a new national commitment to engage with the rest of the world and one another in a less simplistic and more thoughtful way. Feingoldβs hope is that when the history of this era is written, it will be said that our country was taken off guard at the height of its power at the turn of the century and stumbled for a decade in an unfamiliar environment, but in the following decade America found a new national commitment of unity and resolve to adapt to its new status and leadership in the world.
 Media BuzzThis American Life - March 30, 2012
Tavis Smiley - March 6, 2012
CBS This Morning - February 22, 2012
Daily Show with Jon Stewart - February 21, 2012
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