Northern Appalachia has a fascinating economic history. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Upstate New York, West Virginia, and Maryland were the early leaders of American cottage industry. The coal-rich hills and rushing rivers were a fertile birthplace for America's industrial revolution. Canals and railroads flourished. Many of America's great companies would call the region home: U.S. Steel, Standard Oil, Alcoa, and many more. The region powered America's war machine from colonial times, through the ...

By the New York Times’s Global Economics Correspondent, an extraordinary journey to understand the worldwide supply chain—exposing both the fascinating pathways of manufacturing and transportation that bring products to your doorstep, and the ruthless business logic that has left local communities at the mercy of a complex and fragile network for their basic necessities."A tale that will change how you look at the world." —Mark Leibovich

How America's high standard of living came to be and why future growth is under threatIn the century after the Civil War, an economic revolution improved the American standard of living in ways previously unimaginable. Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, motor vehicles, air travel, and television transformed households and workplaces. But has that era of unprecedented growth come to an end? Weaving together a vivid narrative, historical anecdotes, and economic anal...

Michael Lind's Land of Promise is "[an] ambitious economic history of the United States . . . rich with details" ( New York Times Book Review).How did a weak collection of former British colonies become an industrial, financial, and military colossus?From the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries, the American economy has been transformed by wave after wave of emerging technology: the steam engine, electricity, the internal combustion eng...

"Steadily—by redefining green—Jones is making sure that our planet and our people will not just survive but also thrive in a clean-energy economy."—Leonardo DiCaprioA New York Times bestseller, The Green Collar Economy by award-winning human rights activist and environmental leader Van Jones delivers a much-needed economic and environmental solution to today's two most critical problems. With a revised introduction and new afterword by the author—a man who ...

Today's headlines report cities going bankrupt, states running large deficits, and nations stuck in high debt and stagnation. Philip Kotler, Donald Haider, and Irving Rein argue that thousands of "places" -- cities, states, and nations -- are in crisis, and can no longer rely on national industrial policies, such as federal matching funds, as a promise of jobs and protection. When trouble strikes, places resort to various palliatives such as chasing grants from state or federal sources, bi...

What can a spell-checker tell you about economic trends? Why is the world’s supply of ideas about to double? What did America get right in the nineteenth century that it’s getting wrong in the twenty-first? If Karl Marx were alive today, would he be hosting a show on Fox News?These are just a few of the provocative questions asked by Sonic Boom, a (mainly) optimistic look at the near future. Sonic Boom tells why the world’s economy is likely to be just fine, with ...

A profound look at the crisis of work and the collapse of the safety net, and a vision for a better way forward, rooted in America’s cooperative spirit, from the founder of the Freelancers Union“Read this essential book to see how we can and must build the future.”—Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedinMutualism: It’s not capitalism and it’s not socialism. It’s the future.The twentieth century changed every f...

"If we are going to live in a democracy, we need to have a healthy middle class . . . tells us what needs to be done to reclaim what it is to be American." —Eric Utne, founder, Utne ReaderAmerica does not need an "upgrade." For years the Right has been tampering with one of the best political operating systems ever designed. The result has been economic and environmental disaster.In this hard-hitting book, nationally syndicated radio and television...

"A manifesto for our times."—Thomas Frank, Wall Street JournalBarry C. Lynn, one of the most original and surprising students of the American economy, paints a genuinely alarming picture: most of our public debates about globalization, competitiveness, creative destruction, and risky finance are nothing more than a cover for the widespread consolidation of power in nearly every imaginable sector of the American economy.Cornered stri...

The role of large-scale business enterprise—big business and its managers—during the formative years of modern capitalism (from the 1850s until the 1920s) is delineated in this pathmarking book. Alfred Chandler, Jr., the distinguished business historian, sets forth the reasons for the dominance of big business in American transportation, communications, and the central sectors of production and distribution.

This groundbreaking account of the development of American business from the colonial period to the present explains that the history of the United States can best be understood not as a search for freedom—but as a search for wealth and prosperity.The Land of Enterprise charts the development of American business from the colonial period to the present. It explores the nation’s evolving economic, social, and political landscape by examining how different t...