Ultimatum (Hardcover) Matthew Glass

November 2032. Joe Benton has just been voted the forty-eighth president of the United States. He is a man with a unique sense of destiny and a belief that he has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to renew his country. Only days after winning, however, Benton learns in a secret meeting with his predecessor, Mike Gartner, that previous estimates regarding the effect of global warming on rising sea levels have been grossly underestimated. For the United States, the prospects are devastating: Miami will be washed into the ocean and southern California will waste away to desert. Moreover, Gartner has engaged in secret, failed negotiations with the Chinese over carbon emissions.

In a riveting narrative, Matthew Glass takes us inside the Oval Office as Benton struggles with what to tell the public about relocation and how to proceed with the Chinese, and begins to choose his cabinet members as crisis looms. His top security appointments--the diplomatic alan Ball is chosen as national security advisor, while the fiery and opinionated China expert, Lary Olsen, is named the nation's secretary of state-- clash over the proper course of action. Ball urges the new president to initiate reduction talks within the international community, but Olsen persuades Benton to confront the Chinese head on.

With the aggressive Olsen taking the lead, Benton and his administration begin secret negotiations with China. With the skill of a Washington insider, Matthew Glass takes his reader inside the zero-sum game of global politics, where the threat of debilitating economic sanctions, bullying tactics, and covert challenges in the form of punishing ultimatums are merely tricks of the trade. As negotiations heat up, moving from the Oval Office to the president's villa in Beijing to a secluded camp outside of Oslo, Norway, a host of questions arise for the beleaguered U.S. president: Who is making the decisions in China? Is the Chinese government interested in saving the planet or merely protecting its party's own brittle power? And how far will both sides go to push aside short-sighted interest and force an agreement over the most pressing long-term issue either country has ever faced?

When tension escalting on almost every page and building to an astonishing climax, Matthew Glass's visionary and deeply unsetting thriller presents an alarming scenario that rings all too true--this could be our future.

March 2024