National Book Award-winning poet and bestselling author (Iron John) Robert Bly spits fire in this hard-hitting critique of the United States as a nation of "half-adults." Led by rivalrous fatherless sons such as Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, America is knee-deep in trouble with broken families, abandoned children, and a public dehumanized by violence and shallow relationships. Bly uses "Jack and the Beanstalk" and other fairy tales to excoriate the lack of passion, courtesy, and gratitude of men and women who want to stay forever young. He deciphers other signs of decline in his analysis of economics, junk culture, and the women's and men's movements. Bly is a modern-day prophet, and his chief target here is the greedy, selfish, arrogant, and amoral rampage of the acquisitive instinct which is at the heart of the sibling society.