In 1988 Valdas Anelauskas was a dissident journalist writing in the underground Lithuanian ‘samizdat’ whose penetrating critique of Soviet Communism attracted the applause and promotion of a range of American anti-Soviet officials and agencies. By 1998, all that had changed: the Soviet Union was history, many of the imposing American institutions dedicated to its collapse had themselves evaporated, and Valdas Anelauskas had lived in America for almost a decade. `Discovering America as it is’ provides one dissident’s eye-view of America, contrasting what Anelauskas terms “American extreme capitalism” not only with the former Soviet system, but also with the more humane operations of European and other capitalisms. It provides a highly recommended blow by blow analysis of the negative effects and ramifications of major U.S. social policy directions over the past decade and raises serious questions concerning America’s leading role as a model for development.