You might suppose that a political book, appearing less than six months after Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels indicated that he would not run for president, must have been written as a campaign prop. But that’s not Daniels’ style. “Keeping the Republic” is a deadly serious, though frequently witty, effort to lay before the American people the perilous state of the nation.

Be prepared — the first few pages of Chapter 2 can turn your blood to ice. America’s decline, Daniels writes, may not be a gradual slide, but instead a sudden plunge into chaos. Sketching what a financial collapse could look like if we fail to control our debt, he writes, “Monday, 6 a.m.— a Chinese official issues a statement saying that China will no longer be buying Treasury securities because ‘we see no evidence that the U.S. will take the steps necessary to grow its economy or limit its spending so it can afford to repay’ . . . Monday 9:30 a.m. — the dollar drops 10 percent . . . New York stock market opens in free fall . . . Monday afternoon — . . . other nations’ central banks begin to sell off U.S. Treasuries. . .”