From the introduction: Across the East Coast, humanity continues to reassert itself. Step by painful step, it has dragged itself from the darkness. For the first time in generations, people look upon the wastes and the ruins of old America; not with fear or despair, but with precarious hope. With the America of old destroyed, only spectres of the world that came before remain. A wind of change is stirring, and a new world is beginning to coalesce. Yet as foreign influence spreads across the continent and a civil war fuelled by the outrages of slavery looms, those who remember the America of old ask themselves; Are these times truly a chance for a new beginning, or is America doomed to repeat the sins of its past foundations?