The past three years show how quickly cultural shifts can occur, which makes answering the question above all the more urgent. In 1999, we were celebrating our heroes, the stock market had reached unprecedented heights - and many people believed that peace in the Middle East was at hand.

Three years later, the economy is weak, corporate executives are being thrown in jail, bloodletting between Israelis and Palestinians is daily ritual, India is testing missiles, North Korea is threatening the U.S. with nuclear destruction, the U.S. is at war with Iraq, European allies are deserting the U.S., a senator is calling for the resignation of the chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Americans are stocking supplies for terrorist attacks.

What changed? And why?

Is it possible that all of these events flow from the same cause?

Best-selling author Robert Prechter's new two-book set, Socionomics: The Science of History and Social Prediction, proposes a startlingly fresh answer.

In Socionomics: The Science of History and Social Prediction, Robert Prechter spells a historical correlation between patterned shifts in social mood and their most sensitive register, the stock market. He also presents engaging studies correlating social mood trends to music, sports, corporate culture, peace, war and macroeconomic trends.

The new science of socionomics takes hundreds of popular notions about mass psychology, culture and the stock market and stands them on their heads.

Socionomics: The Science of History and Social Prediction includes a 2nd edition of the book that started it all, The Wave Principle of Human Social Behavior and the New Science of Socionomics as well as his new title, Pioneering Studies in Socionomics, an accessible collection of the essays that founded a new basis for social science.

Together, these books can transform your understanding of how our society works. It will change the way you read the newspaper. It will even show you how to predict news trends months in advance. Learn for yourself the science of social prediction. Order Prechter's two-book set today.