American Economic History

In The Republican Noise Machine, David Brock skillfully documents perhaps the most important but least understood political development of the last thirty years: how the Republican Right has won political power and hijacked public discourse in the United States. Brock, a former right-wing...

Sixty years ago, cars and airplanes were still deathtraps waiting to happen. Today, both are safer than ever, thanks in part to one pioneering air force doctor’s research on seatbelts and ejection seats. The exploits of John Paul Stapp (1910–1999) come to thrilling life in this biography of...

“I can confidently say this will be one of my favorite books of 2024.” —Stephen King, bestselling author (and onetime millworker) “American Flannel is a wonderful book--surprising, entertaining, vivid and personal, but also enlightening on the largest questions of America's economic and...

Black Picket Fences is a stark, moving, and candid look at a section of America that is too often ignored by both scholars and the media: the Black middle class. The result of living for three years in "Groveland", a Black middle-class neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, sociologist Mary Pattillo-McCoy has written a book that explores both the advantages and the boundaries that exist for members of the Black middle class.

In light of the intertwining logics of military competition and economic interdependence at play in US-China relations, Trading with the Enemy examines how the United States has balanced its potentially conflicting national security and economic interests in its relationship with the People's Republic of China (PRC). To do so, Hugo Meijer investigates a strategically sensitive yet under-explored facet of US-China relations: the making of American export control policy on military-related technology transfers to China since 1979.

The dollar is everywhere. In your wallet. In your bank account. In your debt, your paycheck, your rent, your retirement — even your dreams. But what is it, really? This isn’t just a history of American money. It’s a story of belief. From revolution to global empire, In Green We Trust traces the rise of the dollar — not just as currency, but as mythology. Gold. Oil. Paper. Wars. Crashes. Promises. Lies. Every chapter unpacks how a piece of green paper became the most powerful object on Earth — and what happens when the world starts questioning what it’s really worth.

The 2008 financial crisis crystallized for people around the country the fact that something was wrong. Americans had already been losing faith in elites who had failed to protect them from crisis after crisis and disaster after disaster. After the collapse, we expected someone to have a solution but were inevitably disappointed. Instead, we got high and rising unemployment, foreclosures spiraling out of control, and, as the protest chant went, "banks got bailed out, we got sold out."

An optimistic book for Americans who are asking, in the wake of Trump’s victory, What do we do now? The answer: We need to organize and fight to protect and expand our democracy. Americans are distraught as tightly held economic and political power drowns out their voices and values. Legendary...

In this explosive, controversial, and profoundly alarming insider’s report, Senator Bob Graham reveals faults in America’s national security network severe enough to raise fundamental questions about the competence and honesty of public officials in the CIA, the FBI, and the White House. For...

Two founding fathers of American industry. One desire to dominate business at any price. “Masterful . . . Standiford has a way of making the 1890s resonate with a twenty-first-century audience.”—USA Today “The narrative is as absorbing as that of any good novel—and as difficult to...

The concluding volume of The New York Times bestselling trilogy One of today?s most outspoken and respected political commentators asks: How can our democracy function when the key institutions of government no longer operate as intended by the Constitution? Stepping back to assess three decades...

A history of African Americans in New York City from the 1910s to 1960, told through the life of Samuel Battle, the New York Police Department’s first black officer. When Samuel Battle broke the color line as New York City’s first African American cop in the second decade of the twentieth...

A stunning and revealing examination of oil's indelible impact on the countries that produce it and the people who possess it. Every unhappy oil-producing nation is unhappy in its own way, but all are touched by the "resource curse"—the power of oil to exacerbate existing problems and create...

Five hundred feet underground, Jeanne Marie Laskas asked a coal miner named Smitty, “Do you think it’s weird that people know so little about you?” He replied, “I don’t think people know too much about the way the whole damn country works.” Hidden America intends to fix that. Like...

Sex and politics dominate national headlines, but what do these dangerous dalliances look like from inside? Bridget Siegel--veteran of John Edwards’s and Barack Obama’s presidential bids--tells a provocative, page-turning tale of a talented young woman who falls in love and in bed with the...

America is mired in debt—more than $30,000 for every man, woman, and child. Bitter fighting over deficits, taxes, and spending bedevils Washington, D.C., even as partisan gridlock has brought the government to the brink of default. Yet the more politicians on both sides of the aisle rant and...

Charlie Crist, the former Republican governor of Florida, spent years in the party’s inner circle. In this no-holds-barred memoir, he shows why he switched sides and became a Democrat. After serving as a Republican governor—one who was on the short list for the vice presidency in...

If you believe children should be seduced into warped sexual behavior by the Gay Elite, if you think confessed murderers should be set free by defense attorneys who know how to wield the race card, if you feel promiscuous gay men should be empowered to spread AIDS and other sexually transmitted...

The riveting story of a dramatic confrontation between Native Americans and white settlers, a compelling conflict that unfolded in the newly created Washington Territory from 1853 to 1857. When appointed Washington’s first governor, Isaac Ingalls Stevens, an ambitious military man turned...

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...