American Finance

This groundbreaking study of agriculture's role in the war defies long-held notions that Northern industrialization and urbanization led to clashes between North and South. Huston argues that the ideological chasm between plantation owners in the South and family farmers in the North led to the political eruption of 1854-1856 and the birth of a sectionalized party system.

Laredo is a city at the crossroads of North American history. Founded by the Spanish in 1755, it has stood at the intersection of regional commerce since its earliest days. Now, John A. Adams, Jr. provides the first-ever panoramic business and economic history of Laredo. He traces the evolution of the region from its early days as a ranching center into the mid-20th century when Laredo had become what it remains today: a booming port of trade and a principle center of commerce and financial services on the southern border of the United States.

Looking at life, how do you think you fared? Financially are you prepared? Our Financial Development is a lifetime journey. As we go through life celebrating work, family, and play, we are continuously facing financial decisions. With each decision, we take a step down a road that will eventually lead us into a future that was once just a thought and is now... a reality.

In November, GM CEO Rick Wagoner appeared before Congress to ask for $25 billion to bail out the struggling Big Three automakers. To critics like Thomas Freidman and Mitt Romney, it was a sign that the American auto industry should be led out to pasture; if the Japanese are better at making cars, they said, then we should let them do it. To defenders, the loss of the country's largest manufacturing sector would be an incomprehensible disaster.

While factories across the Midwest shutter their doors, Cleveland-based manufacturer Lincoln Electric has thrived for more than a century. In addition to being profitable and technologically innovative, through good times and bad, the company has fulfilled its unique promise of "guaranteed continuous employment." Workers are viewed as assets—not liabilities.

In How Do I Tax Thee?, libertarian commentator and rising media star Kristin Tate takes us on a tour of the ways the government bleeds us dry in innumerable daily transactions and at various stages of life. We all know the government taxes our pay: Federal, state, and local taxes are withheld by employers, as are Social Security payments. But what about the many other ways the government drains money from our wallets?

Of the world's 200 largest economies, more than half are corporations. They have more influence on our lives than any other institution, but while boards of directors are supposed to police CEOs and provide independent leadership, they have become enabling lapdogs rather than trustworthy watchdogs.

In A Just and Generous Nation, the eminent historian Harold Holzer and the noted economist Norton Garfinkle present a groundbreaking new account of the beliefs that inspired our 16th president to go to war when the Southern states seceded from the Union. Rather than a commitment to eradicating slavery or a defense of the Union, they argue that Lincoln's guiding principle was the defense of equal economic opportunity.

George Washington: general, statesman...businessman? Most people don't know that Washington was the country's first true entrepreneur, responsible for innovations in several industries. In George Washington, Entrepreneur, John Berlau presents a fresh, surprising take on our forefather's business pursuits. History has depicted Washington as a gifted general and political pragmatist, not an intellectual heavyweight. But he was a serious inventor and inveterate tinkerer and just as intelligent as Jefferson or Franklin.

The United States is heading toward an unavoidable financial catastrophe that will paralyze the markets and the overall economy in ways never before seen. Some call this impending economic catastrophe a double-dip recession, others a financial armageddon. Regardless of what it's called, it is too late to stop it. Debts, Deficits, and the Demise of the American Economy is a look at how we got here, how the crisis is unfolding, and how it will end with a stock market crash in 2012, if not sooner.

In 2000, after the Tribune Company acquired Times Mirror Corporation, it comprised the most powerful collection of newspapers in the world. How then did Tribune nosedive into bankruptcy and public scandal? In The Deal from Hell, veteran Tribune and Los Angeles Times editor James O'Shea takes us behind the scenes of the decisions that led to disaster in boardrooms and newsrooms from coast to coast, based on access to key players, court testimony, and sworn depositions.

A Tale of Two Economies details the ongoing battle between the material and the monetary economies. The good news is that the development of modern technology in our material economy has us on the brink of prosperity. The bad news is that a turf war over the money supply in our monetary economy is destroying our prospects for enjoying this success. Thus, we have rampant inflation and a growing gap between the rich and the poor today.

IBM is in serious trouble. Big Blue, as the company is known, tends to rely for its success on magical thinking but that magic ran out a long time ago. The company got in trouble back in the 1990s and had to hire for the first time an outside CEO, Lou Gerstner, to save the day. Gerstner pushed IBM into services with spectacular results but this hurt the company, too. As services have became commoditized IBM could only compete by offshoring the work and quality suffered.

The Fortune Chaser by H. Wilhelm Starkweather is a historical fiction and psychological fiction novel set in 19th-century America, tracing the ambitious journey of a man seeking redemption and prosperity. Are you intrigued by tales of ambition and redemption set against the backdrop of 19th-century America? If so, then this book is for you. Discover the captivating story of Calvin Michael Blake, an ambitious entrepreneur whose journey takes him from the bustling streets of Philadelphia to the emerging metropolis of Chicago. Even if you've never been a fan of historical fiction, this epic ...

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.

For Jobs and Freedom: Race and Labor in America since 1865 describes the African American struggle to obtain equal rights in the workplace and organized labor's response to their demands. Award-winning historian Robert H. Zieger asserts that the promise of jobs was similar to the 40-acres-and-a-mule restitution pledged to African Americans during the Reconstruction era. The inconsistencies between rhetoric and action encouraged workers, both men and women, to organize themselves into unions to fight against unfair hiring practices and workplace discrimination.

Smugglers, Pirates, and Patriots delineates the differences between the British and Portuguese empires as they struggled with revolutionary tumult. It reveals how those differences led to turbulent transnational exchanges between the United States and Brazil as merchants, smugglers, rogue officials, slave traders, and pirates sought to trade outside legal confines.

Automatic Income is the best-selling dividend-investing book that teaches investors how to earn double-digit returns using a simple, proven and conservative investment strategy. This invaluable resource will show you how to identify investments that offer lower volatility, higher returns and an automatic income stream of dividends that you can live off of during retirement. This strategy is easy to implement and will set you off on a path toward true financial independence.

Just as the industrial capitalism of the 19th century gave way to corporate capitalism in the 20th, recent decades have witnessed corporate capitalism evolving into a new phase, which Ehrenreich calls "Third Wave Capitalism." Third Wave Capitalism is marked by apparent contradictions: Rapid growth in productivity and lagging wages; fabulous wealth for the one percent and the persistence of high levels of poverty; increases in the standard of living and increases in mental illness, and much more.

Written by a "Working-Class American", this book is for "The Working-Class American" that has never been given an education on how to prepare for their financial future. It does not matter if that future is for retirement, or the future of how taxes will affect us all in the future. A Blueprint and Financial Guide for the Working-Class American simply illustrates the Financial STAR points and guides the listener through a point-by-point process to help navigate them to choices that have been available for decades.