I'm Bill Moyers. It's good to have your ear.

Losing Our Way, an intimate portrait of America by the reporter Bob Herbert.

The politicians are interested in getting elected, in amassing power, in funds to finance their campaigns,

and whatever other benefits they get, they are interested in

themselves and the power they can accumulate. They are not interested in most cases in what's best

for the American people. And I think that we're not going to begin to really get out of this,

to get back on the right track until individual Americans start taking it upon themselves to pay closer attention and become more civically engaged.

Thanks for joining us.

I'll wager that in the first seven pages of this book,

Losing Our Way, you will be hooked.

And when you close the final chapter,

you will have seen our country as you haven't in a long time,

intimately through the eyes of a great reporter.

His stories take us across America from the best by headquarters in Minnesota

to ordinary homes

in Allentown, Pennsylvania. You will meet Jessica Gallardo at our high school in Brooklyn,

and Rico and Frankie Blanca Flore of Montclair, New Jersey, survivors of Hurricane Sandy.

You will never forget what happened in an orchard in Afghanistan to Lieutenant Dan Bershinsky and

to Troy, Orion Tom, the Navajo Indian from Shiprock, New Mexico. You'll discover how

corporate tough guys, Neutron Jack Welch, and chainsaw Al Dunlop model the CEO of the future,

blazing away during the high noon of capitalism at the middle class

and working people.

...