Few doubt that the United States has slipped from its longstanding eminence as the world's wealthiest and most productive nation. The problem for the past thirty years has been the diagnosis of both the decline and then the cure. Literally trillions of dollars have been expended in futile programs to staunch the hemorrhaging of our economic wealth, jobs, educational achievement, and cultural elan.

Itzkoff argues that we will never stop the fall until we understand our real national dilemma. This is the decline in our national intelligence profile: fewer citizens of high intelligence, educational potential, and economic productivity. These ideas are taboo. Itzkoff, however, insists that these are the facts, and they must be examined.

In this book, he lays out the available evidence for our social disintegration and suggests a rational program of policy initiatives that would begin to restore us to what we were as recently as 1955 - the great hope of the world.