A revelatory study of how climate change will affect individual economic decisions, and the broad impact of those choicesSelected by Publishers Weekly as one of its Top Ten books in Business and Economics for Spring 2021It is all but certain that the next century will be hotter than any we've experienced before. Even if we get serious about fighting climate change, it's clear that we will need to adapt to the changes already underway in our environment. This book considers ho...

A leading urban economist's hopeful study of how shifts to remote work can change all of our lives for the better.As COVID-19 descended upon the country in 2020, millions of American office workers transitioned to working from home to reduce risk of infection and prevent spread of the virus. In the aftermath of this shift, a significant number of workers remain at least partially remote. It is clear that this massive experiment we were forced to run will have long-...

How can urban leaders in Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis make the smart choices that can lead their city to make a comeback?The urban centers of New York City, Seattle, and San Francisco have enjoyed tremendous economic success and population growth in recent years. At the same time, cities like Baltimore and Detroit have experienced population loss and economic decline. People living in these cities are not enjoying the Ameri...

When are people willing to sacrifice for the common good? What are the benefits of friendship? How do communities deal with betrayal? And what are the costs and benefits of being in a diverse community? Using the life histories of more than forty thousand Civil War soldiers, Dora Costa and Matthew Kahn answer these questions and uncover the vivid stories, social influences, and crucial networks that influenced soldiers' lives both during and after the war.Drawing information from g...

How individuals and the government are changing life in China's polluted citiesOver the past thirty years, even as China's economy has grown by leaps and bounds, the environmental quality of its urban centers has precipitously declined due to heavy industrial output and coal consumption. The country is currently the world's largest greenhouse-gas emitter and several of the most polluted cities in the world are in China. Yet, millions of people continue moving to it...

"Climatopolis documents the thinking of a first-rate economist on one of the most pressing issues of our time" -- NatureWe have released the genie from the bottle: climate change is coming, and there's no stopping it. The question, according to environmental economist Matthew E. Kahn, is not how we're going to avoid a hotter future but how we're going to adapt to it. In Climatopolis, Kahn argues that cities and regions will adapt to rising temperatures ov...

A leading urban economist's hopeful study of how shifts to remote work can change all of our lives for the better.As COVID-19 descended upon the country in 2020, millions of American office workers transitioned to working from home to reduce risk of infection and prevent spread of the virus. In the aftermath of this shift, a significant number of workers remain at least partially remote. It is clear that this massive experiment we were forced to run will have long-...

General John A. Wickham, commander of the famous 101st Airborne Division in the 1970s and subsequently Army Chief of Staff, once visited Antietam battlefield. Gazing at Bloody Lane where, in 1862, several Union assaults were brutally repulsed before they finally broke through, he marveled, "You couldn't get American soldiers today to make an attack like that." Why did those men risk certain death, over and over again, through countless bloody battles and four long, awful years ? Why did ...

A renowned Harvard professor debunks prevailing orthodoxy with a new intellectual foundation and a practical pathway forward for a system that has lost its moral and ethical foundation.Free market capitalism is one of humanity's greatest inventions and the greatest source of prosperity the world has ever seen. But this success has been costly. Capitalism is on the verge of destroying the planet and destabilizing society as wealth rushes to the top. The time for act...

The contrarian historian and analyst upends the conventional reading of the American RevolutionIn 1775, iconoclastic historian and bestselling author Kevin Phillips punctures the myth that 1776 was the watershed year of the American Revolution. He suggests that the great events and confrontations of 1775—Congress’s belligerent economic ultimatums to Britain, New England’s rage militaire, the exodus of British troops and expulsion of royal governor...

"A timely and smart discussion of how different cities and regions have made a changing economy work for them—and how policymakers can learn from that." —Barack ObamaWe're used to thinking of the United States in opposing terms: red versus blue, haves versus have-nots. But today there are three Americas. At one extreme are the brain hubs—cities like San Francisco, Boston, and Durham—with workers who are among the most productive, creative, and best paid on the plan...

"Offers readers new insight into the lives of African American men and women from the North in the era of the Civil War." —Liz Regosin, Charles A. Dana Professor of History, St. Lawrence UniversityA Great Sacrifice is an in-depth analysis of the effects of the Civil War on northern black families carried out using letters from northern black women—mothers, wives, sisters, and female family friends—addressed to a number of Union military officials.Col...