That used to be us : how America fell behind in the world it invented and how we can come back / Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum.

"Expanded edition with a new preface"--Cover.

Includes index.

This book makes recommendations for meeting four major challenges currently facing the United States, including globalization, the information technology revolution, chronic deficits, and unbalanced energy consumption. America has a huge problem. It faces four major challenges, on which its future depends, and it is failing to meet them. In this book the authors analyze those challenges, globalization, the revolution in information technology, the nation's chronic deficits, and its pattern of energy consumption, and spell out what needs to be done now to rediscover America's power and prowess. They explain how the end of the cold war blinded the nation to the need to address these issues seriously. They show how America's history, when properly understood, provides the key to coping successfully and explain how the paralysis of the U.S. political system and the erosion of key American values have made it impossible to carry out the policies the country needs. This work is both a searching exploration of the American condition today and a rousing manifesto for American renewal.

Preface to the paperback edition : It's halftime in America -- Introduction : Growing up in America. The diagnosis. If you see something, say something ; Ignoring our problems ; Ignoring our history. The education challenge. Up in the air ; Help wanted ; Homework x 2 = the American dream ; Average is over -- The war on math and physics. "This is our due" ; The war on math (and the future) ; The war on physics and other good things -- Political failure. The terrible twos ; "Whatever it is, I'm against it" ; Devaluation -- Rediscovering America. They just didn't get the word ; Shock therapy ; Rediscovering America.