In 1776 the U.S. owed huge sums to foreign creditors and its own citizens but, lacking the power to tax, had no means to repay them. This is the first book to tell the story of how foreign-born financial specialists—the immigrant founders Hamilton and Gallatin—solved the fiscal crisis and set the nation on a path to long-term economic prosperity.

What explains the national economic success of the United States, Britain, Germany, and Japan? What can be learned from the long-term championship performances of leading business firms in each country? How important were specific innovations by individual entrepreneurs? And in the end, what is the true nature of capitalist development?The Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Thomas K. McCraw and his coauthors present penetrating answers to these questions. Creating Modern Capitalism ...

“There is properly no history, only biography,” Emerson remarked, and in this ingenious book Thomas McCraw unfolds the history of four powerful men: Charles Francis Adams, Louis D. Brandeis, James M. Landis, and Alfred E. Kahn. The absorbing stories he tells make this a book that will appeal across a wide spectrum of academic disciplines and to all readers interested in history, biography, and Americana.

Pan Am, Gimbel’s, Pullman, Douglas Aircraft, Digital Equipment Corporation, British Leyland—all once as strong as dinosaurs, all now just as extinct. Destruction of businesses, fortunes, products, and careers is the price of progress toward a better material life. No one understood this bedrock economic principle better than Joseph A. Schumpeter. “Creative destruction,” he said, is the driving force of capitalism.Described by John Kenneth Galbraith as “the most sophisticated conser...

The Road to Serfdom, F. A. Hayek’s 1944 warning against the dangers of government control, continues to influence politics more than seventy years after it was turned down by three American publishers and finally published by the University of Chicago Press. A classic work in political philosophy, intellectual and cultural history, and economics, the definitive edition of The Road to Serfdom included this essay as its Introduction. Here, acclaimed Hayek biographer and gen...

New York Times Bestseller • Notable Book of the Year • Editors' Choice SelectionOne of Bill Gates’ “Amazing Books” of the YearOne of Publishers Weekly’s 10 Best Books of the YearLonglisted for the National Book Award for NonfictionAn NPR Best Book of the YearWinner of the Hillman Prize for NonfictionGold Winner • California Book Award (Nonfiction)Finalist • Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History)Final...

History comes alive in this fascinating story of opposing views that continue to play a fundamental role in today's politics and economics. The Big Three in Economics traces the turbulent lives and battle of ideas of the three most influential economists in world history: Adam Smith, representing laissez faire; Karl Marx, reflecting the radical socialist model; and John Maynard Keynes, symbolizing big government and the welfare state.

How did America cease to be the land of opportunity?LONGLISTED FOR THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARDWe take it for granted that good neighborhoods—with good schools and good housing—are only accessible to the wealthy. But in America, this wasn’t always the case.Though for most of world history, your prospects were tied to where you were born, Americans came up with a revolutionary idea: If you didn’t like your lot in life, you coul...

Socialism is a yearning for justice, community, and the greater realization of human potential. Cornel West calls it “the best accessible and reliable treatment we have of what socialism is, was, and should be.”Understanding Socialism is a plainspoken text that disarms false narratives, confronts past failures, and offers a path to a fresh and modern understanding of socialism, by outlining what democracy in the workplace could look like.Wolff not ...

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARDFINALIST, 2020 PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORYBy the late 1960s and early 1970s, reeling from a wave of urban uprisings, politicians finally worked to end the practice of redlining. Reasoning that the turbulence could be calmed by turning Black city-dwellers into homeowners, they passed the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, and set about establishing policies to induce mortgage lenders and the real estate industry to treat Black ...

**A leading economic historian traces the evolution of American capitalism from the colonial era to the present—and argues that we’ve reached a turning point that will define the era ahead.“A monumental achievement, sure to become a classic.”—Zachary D. Carter, author of The Price of Peace**In this ambitious single-volume history of the United States, economic historian Jonathan Levy reveals how capitalism in America has evolved through four distinct ages and how t...

[Teach Yourself] Marx - the Key Ideas will quickly familiarize you with the revolutionary thinking of this great man. It will take you through all the essential concepts - from class struggle to dialectical materialism. Expressing Marx's sometimes complex ideas in simple terms, and backed up with references to his own texts, this book gives you everything you need to know.NOT GOT MUCH TIME?One, five and ten-minute introductions to key principles to get you started.A...