Empire in Denial: The Slow Collapse of American Capitalism is a searing, unsparing account of how the United States traded real prosperity for a delusion—and how that delusion is now collapsing in plain sight.

For decades, Americans were told a story: work hard, play by the rules, and the rewards would follow. But since the 1970s, wages have stagnated while costs exploded. Debt replaced income. Consumption masked inequality. Institutions—once the foundation of civic trust—were sold off, hollowed out, or captured by corporate interests. The result is an economy that functions perfectly for the top one percent, and dysfunctionally for everyone else.

This book dismantles the feel-good narratives and bipartisan evasions that have enabled five decades of economic rot. It connects the dots between frozen wages, unaffordable education, exploitative housing, rigged financial systems, and a political class too compromised to fix any of it. From the rise of consumer debt to the erosion of the dollar’s supremacy, from endless wars abroad to social fragmentation at home, Empire in Denial reveals how decline isn’t coming—it’s here.

Written in direct, unvarnished language and grounded in historical context, this book is not a call to nostalgia or reform. It is a diagnosis of a system running on inertia, distraction, and denial. A country that still performs the rituals of empire but has lost its purpose, legitimacy, and direction.

If you’ve felt like the American Dream is more of a sales pitch than a path, this book explains why. Empire in Denial doesn’t offer platitudes. It offers clarity—and dares readers to face the collapse not as a surprise, but as the logical outcome of decades of willful neglect.

The empire is still standing. But the foundation is gone.