Empire by Orson Scott Card

"Being young is an eighteen-year prison sentence for a crime your parents committed.  But you do get time off for good behavior."

Empire intersperses humor with a rather frightening and horribly realistic future world view of what could happen to the United States.  It revolves around two main characters Major Ruben "Rube" Malich and Captain Bartholomew "Cole" Coleman both officers in the United States Army.  It follows them through the twists and turns of a conspiracy that starts with the assassination of the President and ends in the possibility of a second civil war that may tear the country apart.

What makes the book so horrifying is the believability of the situation.  The country is divided not along lines of race or religion but politics.  Turning on the news on any given night it's easy to see the animosity between the U.S's two major political parties and understand where the crazies from both sides of the room could throw the country into turmoil rather than help it.  The book also postulates on the fall of the democratic nation due to the weight of our own government and an eventual stalemate due to the constraints of the system it labors under.  That particular theory is in evidence on any given day of the week.

"Our short-term politics trump long-term national interest every time.  Can't fix Social security, can't fix the tax structure, can't fix the trade deficit, can't fix outsourcing, can't fix anything because there's always campaign money involved, or demagoguery that blocks the way.  Between the NRA and the AARP, you can't even do the things that vast majorities already agree need to be done."

In the end it is what Card does best that makes the book such a good read.  He makes characters you can sympathize with.  The reader feels for their successes as much as the failures and it is the cracks in each person that make them interesting and relate-able.  Good people trying to do good things and being manipulated by the system and people who only want power, what's not to sympathize with. 

"So he can use his powers for good as well as evil."
"We all can, it's telling the difference that gets so hard"