American Industry

In Unsustainable, Dr. Christopher Voss—a physician with expertise in anesthesiology, critical care, pain medicine, and lifestyle medicine—offers a compelling, well-researched examination of how capitalism has shaped modern healthcare, often rewarding continuous treatment over definitive cures.

From James Beard Leadership Award winner Saru Jayaraman, Forked is an enlightening examination of what we don't talk about when we talk about restaurants: Is the line cook working through a case of stomach flu because he doesn't get paid sick days? Is the busser not being promoted because he speaks with an accent? Is the server tolerating sexual harassment because tips are her only income?

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 ...

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 . . .

Heroines of Mercy Street tells the true stories of the nurses at Mansion House, the Alexandria, Virginia, mansion turned wartime hospital and setting for the new PBS drama Mercy Street. Among the Union soldiers, doctors, wounded men from both sides, freed slaves, politicians, speculators, and spies who passed through the hospital in the crossroads of the Civil War were nurses who gave their time freely and willingly to save lives and aid the wounded.

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 tumultuous Flint sit-down strike of 1936-1937 was the birth of the United Auto Workers, which set the standard for wages in every industry. Midnight in Vehicle City tells the gripping story of how workers defeated General Motors, the largest industrial corporation in the world. Their victory ushered in the golden age of the American middle class and created a new kind of America, one in which every worker had a right to a share of the company’s wealth.

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.

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 ...

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.

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?

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.

In Dying to Save You, Dr. William Queale takes you behind the scenes of our sickcare system. He uses deeply personal stories to explain how we got here and how systems thinking can get us out. But Dying to Save You isn’t just about medicine, science, and healthcare policy. This book is about you—and how you can stay out of the sickcare system altogether.

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.

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.

For the crime of falling sick without wealth, Americans today face lawsuits, wage garnishment, home foreclosure, and jail time. Yet who really profits from aggressive medical debt collection? Your Money or Your Life reveals how medical debt collection became a multi-billion-dollar industry and how everyday Americans are made to pay the price. Emergency physician and historian Luke Messac weaves patient stories into a history of law, finance, and medicine to show how debt and debt collection are destroying the foundational trust between doctors and patients at the heart of American healthcare.

There's an unspoken assumption when we go to see a doctor: the doctor knows our medical story and is making decisions based on that story. But reality often falls short. Medical records vanish when we switch doctors. Critical details of life-saving treatment plans get lost in muddled electronic charts. The doctors we see change according to specialty, hospital shifts, or an insurer's whims. In this gripping narrative from medicine's front lines, Ilana Yurkiewicz reveals how a system that doesn't talk to itself puts insupportable burdens on physicians, patients, and caregivers.

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.

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 ...