The Decline and Fall of the American Nation

More than a century has passed since the collapse and extinction of the American Nation, that massive and unprecedented catastrophe brought about equally by arsonists' flames and by massive, long-term, internal decay. As everyone knows, the full history of this once-great nation's doom was first gathered in the 2110 CE multi-volume work of scholarship, The Decline and Fall of the American Nation. Subsequently, under the auspices of the Universities of Asia Press, Beijing, there arrived a new and updated edition.
As it happens, volume sixteen of that great work, in both editions, consists of the collected writings of Eric Larsen, a figure unknown to history except through these extraordinarily rare surviving papers that include, most importantly, the internationally famous "Diary."

Guided by abundant scholarly commentary, the reader of Volume Sixteen is offered "innumerable windows" through which to witness "a ghostly past" and otherwise lost scenes of "a daily life that has become [by the time of the Late Ante-Penultimate], in almost equal degrees, villainous, pathetic, and risible."
A chronology of the collapse may prove useful to the reader:

Early Preliminary (1950-1964)
Middle Preliminary (1964-1971)
Late Preliminary (1971-1983)
Early Ante-Penultimate (1983-1996)
Middle Ante-Penultimate (1996-2000)
Late Ante-Penultimate (2000-2006)
Early Penultimate (2006-2012)
Middle Penultimate (2013-2019)
Late Penultimate (2020-2024)
Early Ultimate (2025-2031)
Middle Ultimate (2032-2037)
Late Ultimate (2037-2041)
The Collapse (2042-?)