In Blowback, Chalmers Johnson, one of the most distinguished US historians of the Far East and a former consultant to the CIA, predicted the events of September 11 a year before they took place. In this successor volume, Johnson continues the story, deepening his analysis of the American Empire, critically examining its history, and forecasting its likely future.

The Sorrows of Empire scrutinizes the policies, past and present, that have led to American imperialism and the massive defence spending and overseas military deployment that necessarily accompany it. It suggests that the US could suffer the same “overstretch” that led to the demise of the Soviet Union. Johnson outlines the cost of Empire, both for the American people and their Republic, and for the rest of the -world.

Eloquent and impassioned, The Sorrows of Empire is a sombre and cogent analysis, written with an authority that is impossible to ignore.

“In this cri de coeur, he asks us to understand ourselves – to grasp, before it is too late, that America’s modern militarist empire threatens to destroy the democratic republic.’” — William Grieder, author of Who Will Tell the People?

“Chalmers Johnson’s relentless logic, authoritative schoarship, and elegantly biting prose distinguish The Sorrows of Empire. Anyone who reads it will have a much sharper sense of the costs of America’s new world–girdling commitements.” — James Fallows, author of Breaking the News

” The Sorrows of Empire is sobering, for it associates the United States with a dynamic most Americans still find unmentionable – our ever-deepening militarism, with all the sorrows of perpetual war and moral as well as political and economic bankruptcy that inevitably accompany this.” — John W. Dower, author of Embracing Defeat, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

Chalmers Johnson is President of the Japan Policy Research Institute and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of numerous books including, most recently, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire and Japan: Who Governs?

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