In the late 1950s the G.I. bill, government loans, and massive spending on aerospace, computers, and university research created an entirely new group of citizens: "the blue sky tribe". They lived in sunny planned suburbs, were employed for life, and trusted in their corporation and their government. It was a society based on faith, with a heady veneer of sleek space-age modernism. Yet, that faith could not survive the post-Cold War world. As hard economic realities set in, everything was suddenly different.

Based on his essay "The Crash of Blue Sky California", for which he won the National Magazine Award when it appeared in Harper's, these are the issues defining our times: downsizing, middle-class anxiety, anger with the government. He paints a dazzling picture of the America we thought we knew, and the promises we thought we deserved.