Subtitled The Last Days of the American Republic, this long-awaited final volume of Chalmers Johnson’s best-selling Blowback trilogy confronts the overreaching of the American empire and the threat it poses to the republic.

In his prophetic book Blowback, Chalmers Johnson linked the CIA’s clandestine activities abroad to disaster at home. In The Sorrows of Empire, he explored the ways in which the growth of American militarism has jeopardized our security. Now, in Nemesis, he shows how American imperialism is undermining the republic itself, both economically and politically.

Drawing comparisons to empires past, Johnson explores in vivid detail the likely consequences of our dependence on a permanent war economy and what it will mean when the globe’s sole “hyperpower,” no longer capable of paying for the vaulting ambitions of its leaders, becomes the greatest hyper-debtor of all time.

In his stunning conclusion, Johnson suggests that the crisis of a financial breakdown could ultimately prove to be the only path to a renewed nation.

Chalmers Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute, is the author of the bestselling Blowback and The Sorrows of Empire. A frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times, the London Review of Books, and Nation, he appeared in the 2005 prizewinning documentary film Why We Fight. He lives near San Diego.