Although ten years have passed since he wrote it, years that saw the 9/11 attacks, the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq, this book is as relevant now as it was in 1999, A must read. ( )

Greider is interesting in small doses, but rather much in large doses. Fortunately this book is short, just the right length for him.

His central point is that, with the Soviet Union gone (this was written in 1998) it makes little sense for America to continue spending vast sums of money on arms. Even more so, it makes no sense to spend the money as inefficiently as is done.
Specifically his central theme is that the bulk of where the money goes is to maintain in a state of dormancy a variety of factories and military bases across the country; that this infrastructure costs much the same amount whether it is used or kept idle; and that politics of various sorts refuses to allow it to be shut down or rationalized, so it continues to devour vast sums of money while actually delivering very little.
Along the way we are shown various other idiocies, for example the extent of US arms sales around the world.

GWB likes to tell us that 9/11 changed everything but of course I don't buy that. The collision with reality that Greider envisaged has not happened yet, but I see that not as a consequence of 9/11 but as a consequence of the GOP's willingness to raise debts to never-before-seen levels.
At some point that game is going to end, at which point everything Greider says remains just as true, only more so. ( )