"Americans face real economic hardship but respond with fantastical solutions, from tax-cut magic to the end of capitalism. Michael Graetz and Ian Shapiro focus on what truly worries people: their own insecurity. The authors propose concrete reforms affecting taxes, health care, and wages and share organizing strategies to achieve changes people need"--

"Argues that America's strong and sizable middle class is actually embedded in the framework of the nation's government and its founding document and discusses the necessity of taking equality-establishing measures"--NoveList. "In this original, provocative contribution to the debate over economic inequality, Ganesh Sitaraman argues that a strong and sizable middle class is a prerequisite for America's constitutional system. For most of Western history,...

A vivid narration of the history of the tulip, from its origins on the barren, windswept steppes of central Asia to its place of honor in the lush imperial gardens of Constantinople, to its starring moment as the most coveted-and beautiful-commodity in Europe. In the 1630s, visitors to the prosperous trading cities of the Netherlands couldn't help but notice that thousands of normally sober, hardworking Dutch citizens were caught up in an extraordinary...

"In 2008, America went through a terrible financial crisis, and we are still suffering the consequences. Families lost their homes, had to give up their pets, and struggled to pay for food and medicine. Businesses didn't have money to buy equipment or hire and pay workers. Millions of people lost their jobs and their life savings. More than 100,000 businesses went bankrupt ... [Former FDIC chairman Bair] describes the many ways in which a broken system...

"1493 for Young People by Charles C. Mann tells the gripping story of globalization through travel, trade, colonization, and migration from its beginnings in the fifteenth century to the present. How did the lowly potato plant feed the poor across Europe and then cause the deaths of millions? How did the rubber plant enable industrialization? What is the connection between malaria, slavery, and the outcome of the American Revolution? How did the fabled...

Today's most widely read economist challenges America to reclaim the values that made it great. Here he studies the past eighty years of American history, from the reforms that tamed the harsh inequality of the Gilded Age to the unraveling of that achievement and the reemergence of immense economic and political inequality since the 1970s. Seeking to understand both what happened to middle-class America and what it will take to achieve a "new New...

A look at why the worst economy since the 1930s has brought about the revival of conservatism.

The Panic of 1907. Black Tuesday (1929). Black Monday (1987). The Great Recession (2008). The Flash Crash (2010). Taken together they tell the story of a nation reaching enormous heights of financial power while experiencing precipitous dips that alter and reset a market where millions of Americans invest their savings, and on which they depend for their futures. Nations blends economic and cultural history to show how each of these major crashes...