American Economics

Are we living the good life - and what defines good, anyway? Americans today are constructing a completely different framework for success than their parents' generation, using new metrics that TEDWomen speaker and columnist Courtney Martin has termed collectively the "New Better Off".

Much of today's telecom tech – was invented by a woman. She was a very famous actress in her day. Can you name her? One famous photograph of a very tiny thing led to the discovery of the structure of DNA. Do you know the name of the woman who took that photo? You're watching a police drama on TV and you see an officer put on a bullet-proof vest made of Kevlar. Know which woman invented that? Before computers, there were "computers," women who did the heavy math lifting with the pre-electronic tools available to them, namely their math-inclined brains. Would you recognize the names of ...

This American medical ecological and economic history, a saga of Man, Money, and Medicine or “textbook” of sorts, blossomed primarily for the benefit of Dr. DiLibero's many dear students. He has taught and lectured on the subject of migratory medical ecolo-nomics for many years, and has too often found himself digressing “off on a tangent”, describing particularly interesting moments of historical trivia that have influenced his life.

A Washington Post reporter's intimate account of the fallout from the closing of a General Motors assembly plant in Janesville, Wisconsin - Paul Ryan's hometown - and a larger story of the hollowing of the American middle class. This is the story of what happens to an industrial town in the American heartland when its factory stills - but it's not the familiar tale. Most observers record the immediate shock of vanished jobs, but few stay around long enough to notice what happens next, when a community with a can-do spirit tries to pick itself up.

Prize-winning poet and journalist Eliza Griswold’s Amity and Prosperity is an expose on how fracking shattered a rural Pennsylvania town, and how one lifelong resident brought the story into the national spotlight. This is an incredible true account of investigative journalism and a devastating indictment of energy politics in America.

This book is an imagined discussion about the American Welfare State with one of America's most storied liberals, John Kenneth Galbraith.

In the 30 years after the Civil War, the United States blew by Great Britain to become the greatest economic power in world history. That is a well-known period in history, when titans like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and J. P. Morgan walked the earth. But as Charles R. Morris shows us, the platform for that spectacular growth spurt was built in the first half of the century. By the 1820s, America was already the world's most productive manufacturer and the most intensely commercialized society in history.

The twentieth century was the managerial century in the United States. An organizational transformation, from entrepreneurial to managerial capitalism, brought forth what became a dominant narrative: that administrative coordination by trained professional managers is essential to the efficient running of organizations both public and private. And yet if managerialism was the apotheosis of administrative efficiency, why did both its practice and the accompanying narrative lie in ruins by the end of the century?

North Korea is one of the most troubled societies on earth. The country's 24 million people live under a violent dictatorship led by a single family, which relentlessly pursues the development of nuclear arms, which periodically incites risky military clashes with the larger, richer, liberal South, and which forces each and every person to play a role in the "theater state" even as it pays little more than lip service to the wellbeing of the overwhelming majority.

The writing of history is always in terms of a framework, a philosophical and ultimately religious conceptual structure in the mind of the historian. To the orthodox Christian, the shabby incarnations of the reigning historiographies are both absurd and offensive. A Christian historiography and a Christian revisionism are thus for him moral imperatives. These essays are studies in Christian revisionism. There purpose is to call attention those aspects of American history that are currently neglected.

Judicial decisions assessing the constitutional rights of students in the nation’s public schools have consistently generated bitter controversy. The Schoolhouse Gate gives a fresh, lucid, and provocative account of the historic legal battles waged over education and illuminates contemporary disputes that continue to fracture the nation.

In 2001, General Motors hired Bob Lutz out of retirement with a mandate to save the company by making great cars again. He launched a war against penny pinching, office politics, turf wars, and risk avoidance. After declaring bankruptcy during the recession of 2008, GM is back on track thanks to its embrace of Lutz's philosophy. When Lutz got into the auto business in the early sixties, CEOs knew that if you captured the public's imagination with great cars, the money would follow.

They were three Black girls. Dawn, tall and studious; her sister, Kim, younger by three years and headstrong as they come; and her best friend, Debra, already prom-queen pretty by third grade. They bonded—fervently and intensely in that unique way of little girls—as they roamed the concrete landscape of Bronzeville, a historic neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, the destination of hundreds of thousands of Black folks who fled the ravages of the Jim Crow South.

In Money Machine: A Trailblazing American Venture in China, Weijian Shan delivers a compelling account of one of the most significant deals in private equity history: the first and only foreign acquisition of control of a Chinese national bank. Money Machine is the fascinating inside story of the transaction as told by the man who led it, from the intrigues of dealmaking to the complex and uncharted process of securing control by a foreign investor of a Chinese nationwide financial institution, a feat that had never before been attempted, nor has it been repeated.

Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang brilliantly debunked many of the predominant myths of neoclassical economics. Now, in an entertaining and accessible primer, he explains how the global economy actually works - in real-world terms. Writing with irreverent wit, a deep knowledge of history and a disregard for conventional economic pieties, Chang offers insights that will never be found in the textbooks.

The Last Vote: Why Boomers Need to Sit Down and Shut Up is a bold, unfiltered political satire that takes a deep dive into the generational divide reshaping American democracy. With a sharp focus on Boomer politics, this searing critique exposes how the Baby Boomer generation—through decades of toxic voting patterns—has sabotaged the economy, denied climate change, and weaponized cultural nostalgia to block progress. If you're exhausted by economic inequality, rising authoritarianism, and the same tired excuses from the generation that gave us trickle-down economics, this book is your ...

Crack explains why, in a de-industrializing America in which market forces ruled and entrepreneurial risk-taking was celebrated, the crack industry was a lucrative enterprise for the "Horatio Alger boys" of their place and time. These young, predominately African American entrepreneurs were profit-sharing partners in a deviant, criminal form of economic globalization. Hip Hop artists often celebrated their exploits but overwhelmingly, Americans - across racial lines - did not. Crack takes a hard look at the dark side of late 20th-century capitalism.

In 1654, 23 Jewish families arrived in New Amsterdam (now New York) aboard a French privateer. They were the Sephardim, members of a proud orthodox sect that had served as royal advisors and honored professionals under Moorish rule in Spain and Portugal but were then exiled by intolerant monarchs. A small, closed, and intensely private community, the Sephardim soon established themselves as businessmen and financiers. They became powerful forces in society, with some, like banker Haym Salomon, even providing financial support to George Washington's army during the American Revolution.

Who invented supply-side economics - the idea that cutting tax rates can result in more growth, more prosperity at all income levels, and even more tax revenue flowing into the IRS? Most people would credit the economic team that advised Ronald Reagan in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But in fact supply-side economics came of age two decades earlier. And the first president who embraced it was one of the biggest icons of the Democratic Party - John F. Kennedy.

Empire in Denial: The Slow Collapse of American Capitalism is a searing, unsparing account of how the United States traded real prosperity for a delusion—and how that delusion is now collapsing in plain sight. For decades, Americans were told a story: work hard, play by the rules, and the rewards would follow. But since the 1970s, wages have stagnated while costs exploded. Debt replaced income. Consumption masked inequality. Institutions—once the foundation of civic trust—were sold off, hollowed out, or captured by corporate interests. The result is an economy that functions perfectly...