American Industry

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. Born a poor black tobacco farmer, her cancer cells – taken without her knowledge – became a multimillion-dollar industry and one of the most important tools in medicine. Yet Henrietta’s family did not learn of her ‘immortality’ until more than twenty years after her death, with devastating consequences . . .

In The Factory Fallacy: Why America Won’t Build Again, this gripping and sharply argued political economy exposé dismantles the myths underpinning America's manufacturing revival narrative. Through twenty-one rigorously constructed chapters, the book takes aim at the bipartisan delusion that factories will return simply through tariffs, tax cuts, and patriotic branding. It reveals how Trump’s economic policy—rooted in protectionist theater and nationalist messaging—delivers more inflation than infrastructure, more financial speculation than factory jobs. From the gutted vocational ...

Between 1927 and 1979, more than 8,000 people were involuntarily sterilized in five hospitals across the state of Virginia. From this plain and terrible fact springs Elizabeth Catte's Pure America, a sweeping, unsparing history of eugenics in Virginia, and by extension the United States.

In this classic account, historian Philip Foner traces the radical history of black workers’ contribution to the American labor movement.

A deeply revealing memoir of big wins and hard lessons from a seasoned executive caught smack in the middle of the trillion-dollar soft power struggle pitting China against Hollywood, the NBA, and American business....

We think of transplant surgery as one of the medical wonders of the modern world. But transplant surgery is as ancient as the pyramids, with a history more surprising than we might expect. Paul Craddock takes us on a journey—from sixteenth-century skin grafting to contemporary stem cell transplants—uncovering stories of operations performed by unexpected people in unexpected places. Bringing together philosophy, science and cultural history, Spare Parts explores how transplant surgery constantly tested the boundaries between human, animal, and machine.

In The Company Town, Hardy Green, who has covered American business for over a decade, offers a compelling analysis of the emergence of these communities and their role in shaping the American economy, beginning in the country's earliest years....

The American health-care system is failing us. It is a frustratingly complex, opaque, and unaffordable system that results in suboptimal care and a deterioration of the welfare of the majority of American families. The experience of the past few decades and the recent ravaging pandemic has shown us that doing more of the same is not going to deliver us from this dilemma. But there is hope. There is a way to create a more accessible, consumer-friendly, safer, and affordable system of care for all of us.

In November 1942, Paul Andrew Kennedy (1912-1993) boarded the St. Elena in New York Harbor and sailed for Casablanca as part of Operation Torch, the massive Allied invasion of North Africa. As a member of the US Army's 2nd Auxiliary Surgical Group, he spent the next 34 months working in North Africa, Italy, France, and Germany, in close proximity to the front lines and often under air or artillery bombardment. He was uncomfortable, struck by the sorrows of war, and homesick for his wife.

A broken hacker. A brave FBI agent. A deadly brain implant. FBI Cybercrime Special Agent Stella Evans finds the last surviving computer consultant who holds the key to destroying a terrorist organization’s global network, but Cayson Yang may not live long enough to dismantle the computer system. The Chaos… Computer network specialist Cayson Yang’s struggling network infrastructure company has received a rash of new clients lately, the total income of which finally puts Binary Systems, Inc., in the black for the first time ever. He is now able to give pay raises to himself and his ...

Americans are in the midst of a world-historic drug binge. Opiates, amphetamines, benzodiazepines, marijuana, antidepressants, antipsychotics—across the board, consumption has shot up in the twenty-first century. At the same time, the United States is home to the largest prison system in the world, justified in part by a now zombified "war" on drugs. How did we get here?

It all began when Pat LaFrieda’s great-grandfather Anthony LaFrieda decided to pack up and move his family from Italy to New York in search of a better life, setting up the family’s first retail butcher shop in 1922 in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Almost 100 years later, Pat LaFrieda, a fourth-generation butcher and third-generation meat purveyor, is at the helm of a family-run business that has been providing meat to customers for decades.

This landmark, myth-shattering work chronicles the most powerful institution in America, the people who created it, and the pathologies it has spawned. Carroll proves a controversial thesis: The Pentagon has, since its founding, operated beyond the control of any force in government or society. It is the biggest, loosest cannon in American history, and no institution has changed this country more.

For two and a half centuries, America has been held together by the belief that if you work hard and conduct yourself responsibly in this country, you will be able to prosper and leave a better life for your children. But over the past decade, that idea has come into crisis. In this story-driven manifesto on the future of American work, author Jay Richards argues that such thinking is counterproductive - making us more fragile, more dependent, and less equipped to succeed in a rapidly changing economy.

Labor unions and courts have rarely been allies. From their earliest efforts to organize, unions have been confronted with hostile judges and antiunion doctrines. In this book, Julius G. Getman argues that while the role of the Supreme Court has become more central in shaping labor law, its opinions betray a profound ignorance of labor relations along with a persisting bias against unions.

Can one man's ambition shape the destiny of a city? Boston Titan by H. Wilhelm Starkweather is a gripping work of historical and psychological fiction set in 19th-century Boston. This novel delves into the life of Scott Cline, an industrial magnate whose rise to power and wealth significantly impacts the city’s economic landscape. How did Scott Cline transform a simple mineral discovery into a vast business empire? What personal and professional challenges did he face during the turbulent industrial era? How did his relationships and personal values shape his business decisions and legacy...

The hypocrisy of U.S. democracy and self-righteous foreign policy is troubling the world. The U.S. Dept of Defense, the world's largest landlord, operates 737 military bases in 63 countries with military personnel in 156 nations. America is ready to strike any country to procure natural resources to extend its empire, keep the dollar afloat, and ensure its utopia. The military-industrial complex has put over 80,000 innocent Iraqis and 4,000 U.S. troops in an early grave, while putting itself in $9 trillion in debt. Alienating humanity and creating new terrorists daily, American foreign ...

The best-selling author of Nickel and Dimed goes back undercover to do for America's ailing middle class what she did for the working poor. Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed explored the lives of low-wage workers. Now, in Bait and Switch, she enters another hidden realm of the economy: the world of the white-collar unemployed.

Bart Stupak, a nine-term Democratic Congressman from Michigan’s First Congressional District, brought two unshakable principles with him to Capitol Hill in 1992: a firm belief in the sanctity of life, and the conviction that health care was a right for all Americans and not a privilege for the fortunate few. Studies indicating that 45,000 Americans died needlessly every year for lack of access to health care inspired Congressman Stupak’s tireless efforts, often at great personal cost, to pass lifesaving legislation while remaining true to his right-to-life principles.

It's 2024, and police brutality against Black people is at an all-time high in Baltimore and across the country. Corey Masters, a young Black man, is deeply troubled by experiences of racism during his childhood. After a false arrest and beating by police, Corey's anger is at boiling point. It is then that his roommate introduces him to the Baltimore Cell, one of many secret groups around the country recruiting and training Black people for armed resistance.