Economic History United States

America is a smuggler nation. Our long history of illicit imports has ranged from West Indies molasses and Dutch gunpowder in the 18th century, to British industrial technologies and African slaves in the 19th century, to French condoms and Canadian booze in the early 20th century, to Mexican workers and Colombian cocaine in the modern era. Contraband capitalism, it turns out, has been an integral part of American capitalism.

In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollar's astonishing rise to become the world's principal currency. Telling the story with the verve of a novelist, he recounts key episodes in US monetary history, from the Civil War debate over fiat money (greenbacks) to the recent worldwide financial crisis. Brands explores the dollar's changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how America's economic might made the dollar the fundamental standard of value in world finance.

Perhaps the 19th century's best book on Wall Street, Fifty Years in Wall Street provides a fascinating look at the financial markets during a period of rapid economic expansion.

More than 50 years ago, an assassin's bullet robbed us of one of the most eloquent voices for 20th-century human rights and justice. Drawing on a new generation of scholarship about the civil rights era, To the Promised Land goes beyond the iconic view of King as an advocate of racial harmony to explore his profound commitment to the poor and working class, and his call for "nonviolent resistance" to all forms of oppression, including economic injustice.

Though best known for his primary authorship of the Federalist Papers, his death in a duel at the hands of Vice President Aaron Burr on the banks of the Hudson River and his star role in a 21st-century musical, it is often overlooked that Alexander Hamilton was instrumental in creating the key financial building blocks of the young United States of America. The first incumbent of the office of secretary of the Treasury on September 11, 1789, Hamilton submitted a series of financial reports many of which became the economic foundations on which the US was built.

The Compassionate Capitalists pulls back the curtain on the forgotten entrepreneurs who built empires without grinding their workers into dust. From Henry Ford doubling wages overnight to Madam C.J. Walker building a beauty empire that empowered thousands of Black women, these industrialists dared to prove that you could run a successful business without being a soulless overlord.

There may be no story today with a wider gap between fact and fiction than the relationship between the United States and Mexico. Through portraits of business leaders, migrants, chefs, movie directors, police officers, and media and sports executives, Andrew Selee looks at this emerging Mexico, showing how it increasingly influences our daily lives in the United States in surprising ways - the jobs we do, the goods we consume, and even the new technology and entertainment we enjoy.

Historian Sean Wilentz presents two key insights that together reveal a clearer, much-needed vision of American political history. First, partisanship has almost always been a feature of American history and in fact has made possible the nation's greatest social reforms. There is little to be gained from a "postpartisan" political world. Second, the recent attention to economic inequality has a long history. From the founders' generation to the present, America's egalitarian tradition has appeared and reappeared like an underground river.

El colapso del mercado de valores de 1929 no provocó la Gran Depresión en sí misma, pero fue un poderoso punto de partida simbólico para el mayor desastre económico del siglo XX. En ese oscuro día de octubre de 1929, se perdieron fortunas y el temor a la inseguridad financiera aumentó en todo Estados Unidos y el mundo. En 1932, el punto más bajo de la Depresión, un tercio de los estadounidenses no tenían trabajo e incluso había más gente desempleada que en otros países.

While history teaches that successful revolutions depend on participation by the common man, the establishment of a stable and independent United States first required wealthy colonials uniting to disrupt the very system that had enriched them, and then funding a very long war. While some fortunes were made during the war at the expense of the poor, many of the wealthy embraced the goal of obtaining for their poorer countrymen an unprecedented equality of opportunity, along with independence.

In 1980, Exxon U.S.A., the world's largest corporation, began development of a five-billion-dollar oil shale industry in the pristine Colorado River Valley. Within eighteen months, Exxon had canceled its elaborate Colony project and 2,100 workers were immediately laid off. Boomtown Blues chronicles the social, environmental, and economic havoc created by one of the most expensive boom and bust cycles in the history of the American West.

Mark Twain's lifetime spans America's era of greatest economic growth. And Twain was an active, even giddy, participant in all the great booms and busts of his time, launching himself into one harebrained get-rich-quick scheme after another. But far from striking it rich, the man who coined the term "Gilded Age" failed with comical regularity to join the ranks of plutocrats who made this period in America notorious for its wealth and excess.

Conquer the FSOT: Study Guide for the Foreign Service Officer Test is an essential resource for anyone aspiring to join the U.S. Foreign Service. This comprehensive guide covers a wide array of topics necessary for success on the Foreign Service Officer Test (FSOT). The Job Knowledge section delves into crucial areas such as the U.S. Government, U.S. History, World History and Geography, Economics, Mathematics and Statistics, Principles of Management, Communication and Media, and Computers and the Internet. Each topic is meticulously explained to provide a solid foundation in the knowledge ...

This enthralling book is the first to uncover the story of New York City merchants who engaged in forbidden trade with the enemy before and during the Seven Years’ War. Ignoring British prohibitions designed to end North America’s wartime trade with the French, New York’s merchant elite conducted a thriving business in the French West Indies, insisting that their behavior was protected by long practice and British commercial law. But the government in London viewed it as treachery, and its subsequent efforts to discipline North American commerce inflamed the colonists.

This book examines one of the most important economic outcomes in American history - the breakdown of the Keynesian Revolution. Drawing on economic literature, the memoirs of economists and politicians, and the popular press, Eric Crouse examines how economic decline in the 1970s precipitated a political revolution. Keynesian thought flourished through the presidencies of Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford, until stagflation devastated American workers and Jimmy Carter’s economic policies faltered, setting the stage for the 1980 presidential campaign.

What You Need To Know About The TRUMP Tariffs NOW - Protect Yourself and Capitalize on the Dramatic Changes Ahead! Unlock the INSIDER'S guide to the Trump Tariffs and gain an unfair advantage! Sruggling to understand the sweeping implications of the 2025 Trump Tariffs? Cut through the noise and get straight to the essential facts in "What You Need To Know About The TRUMP Tariffs NOW" by Paul David Franklin. This isn't just another dry economic treatise; it's your action-oriented guide to navigating the seismic shifts in global trade and the US economy. In addition to the historical facts of...

Many hands have built our great nation, and many of them have come far from home to do it. I'd like you to please discover more about how migration has helped shape modern America. America’s history is rich with the stories of brave people with big dreams who have come here searching for opportunities—and in doing so, they’ve helped to shape both our economy and our culture. What drove these people? What challenges did they face along the way? There’s so much more to American history than the history books have told you.

We Sell Drugs is a study grounded in the transnational geography and political economy of the coca-leaf and coca-derived commodities market stretching from Peru and Bolivia into the United States. More than a narrow biography of one famous plant and its equally famous derivative products - Coca-Cola and cocaine - this audiobook situates these commodities within the larger landscape of drug production and consumption. Examining efforts to control the circuits through which coca traveled, Suzanna Reiss provides a geographic and legal basis for considering the historical construction of designations of legality and illegality.

The book also argues that the legal status of any given drug is largely premised on who grew, manufactured, distributed, and consumed it and not on the qualities of the drug itself. Drug control is a powerful tool for ordering international trade, national economies, and society's habits and daily lives. In a historical landscape animated by struggles over political economy, national autonomy, hegemony, and racial equality, We Sell Drugs insists on the socio-historical underpinnings of designations of legality to explore how drug control became a major weapon in asserting control of domestic and international affairs.

Some 70 years before the Mayflower sailed, a small group of English merchants formed the world's first joint-stock company. Back then, in the mid-16th century, England was a small and relatively insignificant kingdom on the periphery of Europe. Struggling with a single export - woolen cloth - the merchants were forced to seek new markets and trading partners. As this absorbing account shows, innovation and risk-taking were at the heart of the settlement of America, as was the profit motive.

"America at the Crossroads: Parallels with the Roman Empire’s Fall" explores the economic, military, political, and social factors that contributed to the collapse of the Roman Empire, drawing comparisons with modern-day America.