Best of Times

We were awash in money and spellbound by celebrity and scandal. It was a time of breathtaking strides in science and unprecedented possibility. A time of squandered opportunities and grave distraction. A time of tragic complacency and belief in our invulnerability. <p/>In <em>The Best of Times</em> Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Haynes Johnson looks back on the decade that defied anyone's expectations for better or worse. With a sharp eye for the quote or detail that perfectly captures a moment in time Johnson tells the whole story no holds barred of the roller-coaster self-indulgent nineties when America paid no attention to gathering foreign storms or looming economic collapse. <p/>The product of four years of interviews with the decade's most influential players this is in the best tradition of timeless social history--a memorable portrait of the entire wonderful yet woeful decade that ended in the cataclysmic flames of September 11. <p/>A James H. Silberman Book<br>National Bestseller <p/>Now with a New Foreword Afterword and Postscript <p/>In offering this paperback edition of the bubble years I hope the stories I tell of that newly old America will illuminate how in a few short years we went from the best of times to the worst of times. In my Afterword I suggest what lessons we must learn from that experience to avoid further disasters and close the circle on some events that typified the period. <br>--Haynes Johnson<br>From the new Foreword<br>