One of our most incisive and committed journalists—author of the classic All the Livelong Day—shows us the real human cost of our economic follies.The Great Recession has thrown huge economic challenges at almost all Americans save the super-affluent few, and we are only now beginning to reckon up the human toll it is taking. Down the Up Escalator is an urgent dispatch from the front lines of our vast collective struggle to keep our heads above wa...

One of our most incisive and committed journalists—author of the classic All the Livelong Day—shows us the real human cost of our economic follies.The Great Recession has thrown huge economic chal┬¡lenges at almost all Americans save the superaffluent few, and we are only now beginning to reckon up the human toll it is taking. Down the Up Escalator is an urgent dispatch from the front lines of our vast collective struggle to keep our heads above water and maybe ev...

In A Fighting Chance, an unlikely political star tells the inspiring story of the two-decade journey that taught her how Washington really works—and really doesn'tAs a child in small-town Oklahoma, Elizabeth Warren yearned to go to college and then become an elementary school teacher—an ambitious goal, given her family's modest means. Early marriage and motherhood seemed to put even that dream out of reach, but fifteen years later she was a distinguished l...

Arianna Huffington turns the spotlight on the tough reforms we must demand from Washington that go beyond the Corporate Responsibility Act.

A Federal Reserve insider pulls back the curtain on the secretive institution that controls America’s economyAfter correctly predicting the housing crash of 2008 and quitting her high-ranking Wall Street job, Danielle DiMartino Booth was surprised to find herself recruited as an analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, one of the regional centers of our complicated and widely misunderstood Federal Reserve System. She was shocked to discover just how much tunn...

From the author of the New York Times Notable Book of the Year Drive By comes a unique and riveting exploration of one of America’s largest and fastest-growing industries—the business of poverty. Broke, USA is a Fast Food Nation for the “poverty industry” that will also appeal to readers of Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed) and David Shipler (The Working Poor).

The rich are not only getting richer, they are becoming more dangerous. Starting in the early 1980s the top one percent broke away from the rest of us to become the most unstable force in the economy. An elite that had once been the flat line on the American income charts—models of financial propriety—suddenly set off on a wild ride of economic binges.Not only do they control more than a third of the country's wealth, their increasing vulnerability to the booms and busts of the sto...

*“They’re still trying to hide the weenie,” thought Sherron Watkins as she read a newspaper clipping about Enron two weeks before Christmas, 2001. . . It quoted [CFO] Jeff McMahon addressing the company’s creditors and cautioning them against a rash judgment. “Don’t assume that there is a smoking gun.”Sherron knew Enron well enough to know that the company was in extreme spin mode…Power Failure* is the electrifying behind-the-scenes story of the collapse of Enron, the high-f...

As a once-in-a lifetime downturn continues, trusted finance reporter Chris Farrell explains that there is a silver lining to this cloud. It is accelerating a trend already underway in America toward what he calls the New Frugality. In this friendly, approachable audio, Farrell explains both the theory and the practice of living frugally. He provides down-to-earth, practical advice for every aspect of your financial life, including:How to always maintain a "margin of safety" in your...

The financial crisis that has gripped this country since last September has had so many twists and turns, it would make for a great drama -- if it all were not so real and damaging. Companies are shutting down and laying off workers, 401ks are melting away, and the government is spending $700 billion dollars to bail out banks and financial institutions -- and that's only the beginning. The financial services industry, and the many industries that depend on it -- from housing to cars -- is ...

A forceful argument against America's vicious circle of growing inequality by the Nobel Prize–winning economist.The top 1 percent of Americans control 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. And, as Joseph E. Stiglitz explains, while those at the top enjoy the best health care, education, and benefits of wealth, they fail to realize that “their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.”Stiglitz draws on his deep understanding of economics to show that growing inequali...

Deemed "essential" in the canon of American literature, this audiobook masterpiece performed in its entirety by a full cast of fifty makes the classic accessible to everyone.From a cemetery in a fictional mid-American town, the dead speak the truths about their lives. Some speak of hardships and sordid affairs, while others speak of their simple, honest, happy lives. Some are elderly and others are youthful or children, but mortality has claimed them all. Their voices reach us deep...