THE EMPTY CIRCLE

A true story of ambition, collapse, survival?and an America struggling with change.

In the early 1980s, Raymond Dierker appeared to be living the American success story. His career was accelerating, his family was growing, and the future seemed secure.

Then everything changed.

The Empty Circle is Dierker's deeply personal account of a period that brought extraordinary professional pressure, psychiatric hospitalization, fear for his family and newborn daughter, and a struggle to understand what was happening to his life and to the country around him.

The years 1981?1983 were also a period of intense racial tension in America. The nation was still reeling from the Atlanta Child Murders, which terrified families and exposed painful racial divisions. Economic upheaval, social change, Cold War anxiety, and racial distrust formed the backdrop against which Dierker's own crisis unfolded.

His story eventually intersects with one of the defining tragedies of the Cold War?the 1983 destruction of Korean Air Lines Flight 007?and the haunting images and questions that followed.

SPECIAL ADDENDUM ? SHOOTING TO KILL

This expanded edition includes Shooting to Kill, the original illustrated work that became the source for the movie script.

Presented with its original visual material, Shooting to Kill allows readers to experience the story behind the screenplay and see how history, images, and narrative were brought together for the screen.

Part memoir, part historical time capsule, and part examination of an America under enormous strain, The Empty Circle preserves the experiences of one man while capturing an extraordinary period in American history.,,

The circle may have been broken?but the story was never finished.