American Economics

This book is about the partnership of God and Mammon in the New World - about how Americans have made money and lost money, and about how they have thought about that obsessive and peculiarly American subject. Money is the basic American thing, the life's blood of the country. God and Mammon shows how the dynamics of money in its many dimensions (material, spiritual, cultural, psychological) worked to make America what it is. It traces the grand American binaries of success and failure to their theological origins in Calvinism's anxieties about salvation and damnation.

Although most Americans attribute shifting practices in the financial industry to the invisible hand of the market, Mark H. Rose reveals the degree to which presidents, legislators, regulators, and even bankers themselves have long taken an active interest in regulating the industry.

Beginning with a careful analysis of the 2012 election - including a look at the challenge the GOP had in reaching a majority of voters and the prevalence of identity politics - Ryan examines the state of the Republican party and dissects its challenges the country to certain ruin. Culminating in a plan for the future, The Way Forward argues that the Republican Party is and must remain a conservative party, emphasizing going forward.

In American Mojo: Lost and Found, Peter D. Kiernan, the award-winning author of the New York Times best-seller Becoming China's Bitch, focuses on America's greatest challenge and opportunity: restoring the middle class to its full promise and potential. Our educated, skilled, and motivated middle class was the cornerstone of America's postwar economic might, but the country's dynamic core has struggled and changed dramatically through the last three decades.

Politicians, voters, executives, and employees all want the answer to one question: How can America compete with cheap foreign labor, and restore skilled, well-paying jobs to our economy? American Drive answers that question.

The Great American Bank Robbery maps out in detail exactly how Washington social engineers and their accomplices reshaped banking regulations and housing policies and gutted time-tested underwriting standards that led to the worst financial calamity since the 1930s, one that has robbed American households of $14 trillion in net worth.

Throughout the 20th century, "free enterprise" has been a contested keyword in American politics, and the cornerstone of a conservative philosophy that seeks to limit government involvement into economic matters. Lawrence B. Glickman shows how the idea first gained traction in American discourse and was championed by opponents of the New Deal. Those politicians, believing free enterprise to be a fundamental American value, held it up as an antidote to a liberalism that they maintained would lead toward totalitarian statism.

“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” This phrase, arguably Thomas Edison’s most famous quote, has been drilled into the minds of generations of Americans. A fairly straightforward iteration of the idea that innovation, discovery, and ingenuity are the result of drive and grit above all, it has also come to represent much darker myths: that hard work always leads to success and that achievement is the product of individuals and not communities.

Robber Barons and Wretched Refuse explores the connection between the so-called robber barons who led American big businesses during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era and the immigrants who composed many of their workforces.

Over the last four decades, debt, bankruptcy, and home foreclosures have risen to epidemic levels, and the personal savings rate has sunk dangerously low. Why, in the richest nation on Earth, can't Americans hold on to their money? First published in 2008, Stuart Vyse's Going Broke described the epidemic of personal debt that existed in the years leading up to the Great Recession and anticipated the home mortgage crisis that started it. Ten years later, this fully updated new edition tackles the post-recession era of economic recovery.

Private foundations have been the dynamo of social change since their invention at the beginning of the last century. Yet just over 10 percent of the public knows they even exist; and for those who are aware of them, as well as even those who seek grants from them, their internal workings remain a complete mystery

The American dream of equal opportunity is in peril. America's economic inequality is shocking, poverty threatens to become a heritable condition, and our healthcare system is crumbling despite ever increasing costs. In this thought-provoking book, Edward D. Kleinbard demonstrates how the failure to acknowledge the force of brute luck in our material lives exacerbates these crises leading to warped policy choices that impede genuine equality of opportunity for many Americans.

The Voucher Promise examines the Housing Choice Voucher Program, colloquially known as "Section 8", and how it shapes the lives of families living in a Baltimore neighborhood called Park Heights. Eva Rosen tells stories about the daily lives of homeowners, voucher holders, renters who receive no housing assistance, and the landlords who provide housing.

One of the greatest challenges for the African American community is a severe lack of power. Like caged animals in the zoo, millions of black people in America and across the world often feel that our lives are controlled by other people or that opportunities only enter our lives when they are created by our oppressors. This debilitating mindset can lead to hopelessness, depression and decision-making that is driven by fear rather than desire. Instead of believing that we possess the ability to improve our lives, we simply wait and hope that White Americans will one day have a change of heart.

One of America’s greatest success stories is its economy. For over a century, it has been the envy of the world. The opportunity it generates has inspired millions of people to want to become American. Today, however, America’s economy is at a crossroads. Across the political spectrum, many want the government to play an even greater role in the economy via protectionism, stakeholder capitalism, or even quasi-socialist policies. But managed decline and creeping statism do not have to be America’s only choices, let alone its destiny. This audiobook insists there is an alternative.

The American Dream is close to being replaced by a living nightmare. Key commodities that are essential to our daily lives and that are widely believed to be abundant are running critically short. Even worse, the Chinese are doing what they can to monopolize the world's dwindling resources. The U.S. is now largely dependent on our greatest economic rival for rare earth elements as well as a host of other minerals - all of which are absolutely essential to the development of alternative energies....

We are a nation founded on the ideals of coming together across differences to forge a common future. Yet over the past 50 years, our economy has been pulling us apart at unprecedented rates. By allowing top income earners and the wealthiest Americans to hoard wealth like almost never before, we belie what makes our country great. This is a threat to our wellbeing, our democracy, and our values.

Compared to other industrialized nations, the United States is losing ground across nearly every indicator of social health. Its race problem, argues Eduardo Porter, is largely to blame. In American Poison, the New York Times veteran shows how racial animus has stunted the development of nearly every institution crucial for a healthy society, including organized labor, public education, and the social safety net. The consequences are profound and are only growing graver with time.

In his first book, American Underdog, David Brat examines how we brought down the status quo by tapping in to moral and economic lessons as old as our civilization and discusses how Washington can learn from history instead of ignoring it. A fighter for children, he illuminates how our current fiscal policies are selling their future and outlines new ways to move forward with a conservative agenda that provides fairer treatment for all.

Are we living the good life - and what defines good, anyway? Americans today are constructing a completely different framework for success than their parents' generation, using new metrics that TEDWomen speaker and columnist Courtney Martin has termed collectively the "New Better Off".