Peter D. Kiernan - American Mojo: Lost and Found: Restoring our Middle Class Before the World Blows By

PRAISE FOR

AMERICAN MOJO: LOST AND FOUND

Peter Kiernan is a man with a big visionfor the middle class. In this robust and imaginative analysis of how the middle class must be secured he cuts through the fog and presents a clear vision for a new course. Bravo.

TOM BRQKAW

Peter Kiernan has written the book that needed to be writtenand read right now. His documentation of how Americas middle class rose and is now teetering is the wake-up call this country needs to hear. His incisive storytelling, trenchant observations and clear-eyed solutions make this a must read.

GEOFFREY CANADA, PRESIDENT, HARLEM CHILDRENS ZONE

American Mojo is a page-turner of a gripping story, one that reads like fiction but in fact weaves the drama of the breakdown of our healthy middle class. And then hope brims from the pages as Peter Kiernan guides us toward a truly possible future where the jewel of our nationour middle classcould actually shine again for real. If you care about America, there is no more important book out there today.

DIANA NYAD, CHAMPION OCEAN SWIMMER, AUTHOR, AND FREQUENT PUBLIC SPEAKER FOR SOCIAL BETTERMENT

AMERICAN

MOJO:

LOST AND FOUND

LOST AND FOUND

RESTORING OUR MIDDLE CLASS

BEFORE THE WORLD BLOWS BY

PETER D. KIERNAN

T U R N E R

Turner Publishing Company

424 Church Street Suite 2240

Nashville, Tennessee 37219

445 Park Avenue 9th Floor

New York, New York 10022

www.turnerpublishing.com

AMERICAN MOJO: LOST AND FOUND RESTORING OUR MIDDLE CLASS BEFORE THE WORLD BLOWS BY

Copyright 2015 Peter Kiernan, III. All rights reserved.

All rights reserved. This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Book design: Kym Whitley

Cover design: Maddie Cothren

Front Cover Image: Thinkstock/Stockbyte/Getty Images

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kiernan, Peter D.

American mojo, lost and found : restoring our middle class before the world blows by / Peter D. Kiernan.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-63026-923-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. Middle class--United States. 2. United States--History--1945-3. United States--Social conditions--1945- 4. United States--Economic conditions--1945- 5. United States--Civilization--1945- I. Title.

HT690.U6K54 2015

305.550973--dc23

2015000339

Printed in the United States of America

15 16 17 18 19 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Eaddo and our adults Eaddy, Mareill, Lacy, and Peter

Were a chain!

Misplacing Americas middle classthe beginning

A postwar middle-class miracle

First cracks in the faade

The uninvited demand their rights

Youth in revolt

Nixons hydra of economic woes

Surviving the Republican wreck

Reagan reconsidered

Not the invisible hand, but the invisible handshake

A time for wealth to lead the charge

Living a dream deferred

Confronting dragons of poverty and winning

Return of economic segregation

A new engine of the middle class

An American super-minority

Americas place in global manufacture

The United States of underemployment

The new abnormal of job creation

The worlds exploding middle class

High winds in the developing world

Stay the course or restore our middle class by immersion in the emerging world

How you change everything

Sources and further reading

To EADDO, MY WARM SOUTHERN sunshine: Your loving, generous spirit creates the center of gravity of our lives. You are the soul of our family and my reason for being. Your sparkling sense of humor has kept us all laughing through every turnheres to thirty four more years of laughter, love, and joy.

To our spectacular Eaddy, Mareill, Lacy, and Peter: If our goal was to have our young adults be more interesting than we are, we have succeeded. But our hearts glow warmer at what giving, dear, and decent people you have become. You bring us joy in ways I cannot describe.

To my beloved parentsyou are still with me in countless ways, and I miss you so.

To my oh-so-Irish siblings: John, Casey, Greg, Michael, Stephen, and Amy, our annual reunions with spouses, in-laws, outlaws, and children of every variety sustain me like an elixir.

To in-laws Jean, Boo, Garrett, and Ross, and to beautiful C.J., Hayes, and Neely: your love is redolent with the charms of the low country. And to dearly departed Lawson, Eaddy, and Lawson III, we carry on in your name.

For all those twenty-one nieces and nephews and an in-law toojoy in life is being your uncle Pete.

Singling out one of the dedicated faculty who nudged me forward, Ray OBrien, Mark Ryan, Jim Shea, Jules Viau, John Coffin, Fred Rudolph, C. Ray Smith, Bill Sihler, John Colley, Jack Weber, Alan Beckenstein, Les Grayson, Ralph Biggadike, Sarah Gage, Sam Bodily, and so many more who undertook the task of polishing my rough cuts, should be impossible. But for all their greatness, it isnt. Sheafe Satterthwaite changed the life of a gangly Williams sophomore with the simple question, Are you Kiernando you know you wrote me a great paper? My reply, Really, I didnt mean to, pretty much says it all.

That moment forever altered the direction of my life.

To Ray Kennedy: a gallant newspaper publisher who gave me my first reporting jobs, and Paul Zindell, who taught me the ropes of newspapering.

To T. Lincoln Morison, Thomas Murphy, and Hank Paulson for giving me a shot.

To Ian Jackman: a dedicated and unflinching editor who invested so much energy in pushing me to sharpen and improve this story. I admire your passion for the American middle class and for making me get things right.

To Todd Bottorff, Katherine Rowley, Kelsey Reiman, Caroline Davidson, Lisa Grimenstein and the good people at Turner Publishing for joining in the cause of this powerful story and in getting it told. Its great to be with you again.

To Steve Ross of Abrams Artists Agency, who has been more than an agent: How many would tell a writer to tear up an insufficient draft and start over? Your passion was for telling this important story with grace and authority; your guidance, tough minded and superb.

And a huge thanks to Sandi Mendelson and David Kass of Hilsinger, Mendelson East. You are the definition of a class act and it is a privilege to work with you both.

To Patty Sardinas, Roger Souto, and Charles Petti, and to so many others who keep my life sane.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart. You all contributed to this marathon effort.

THE GENIUS OF YOUAMERICANS, Egyptian president Nasser reportedly observed, is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves, which makes us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them we are missing.

I FIRST BEGAN TO SEE dead people as they truly are when I toiled as a young obituary writer for the Hudson Register Star, a daily afternoon broadsheet in upstate New York.

While more experienced reporters chased Watergate stories and their own tunes of glory, I compiled these small daily histories and in the process came to a basic conclusion about life that formed the premise for this book.