There are lots of doom and destruction books out there painting a bleak picture of the post industrial world. Most paint a kind of Mad Max future of renegades. I am not sure that is how it would go. I think it would be more a slow steady slide with people hanging on all the way down, mostly in denial. That is what Kunstler sees. The story starts 15 years after a big bomb destroys NYC and LA. Not unthinkable in today’s terrorist world. The infrastructure just sort of breaks slowly. Various diseases run rapid. Transportation fails due to lack of oil. Do you know that the overstuffed grocery store next to you only has about two days worth of goods? If the distribution system breaks down, the food runs out QUICK! Look what happened during Katrina. That was not the future, that was the recent past! And Burma. The only reason these regions survived is that the greater organism (the US, the whole world) was still healthy and could provide life support to the damaged part. How many bleeding sores can one country have at a time? Can one world have at a time? There is a tipping point somewhere. We haven’t found it yet and I pray we never do. But if you want to see one VERY plausible vision of how the world would be with multiple open sores coming quickly next to each other, read this book. I rate 5 out of 5.