Presents a historical perspective on the relationship between economic, technological, and political change by analyzing the economic growth of the United States over the course of two centuries.

"In public discourse in the United States, small businesses are lauded as drivers of the economy and keys to economic growth, while "big business" is often vilified. Even in the face of evidence that larger firms are proven to be more likely to stimulate economic growth, American public policy favors small businesses through measures such as lowering taxes or regulatory requirements for firms under a certain number of employees. The authors trace the anti-big business sentiment back to its roots in the early founding of our nation. While the Jeffersonian ideal of every citizen being self-employed made sense for a pre-industrial agrarian society, changes in technology have led to significant economies of scale for big businesses. Now, we see that countries with more self-employed workers are also more likely to be in poverty (think of emerging economies where everyone is an entrepreneur, and compare it to the compensation and benefits packages available to employees of large firms in more advanced economies). Rather than simply taking the opposite view that "bigger is better," the authors argue that a modern capitalist society has room for businesses of all sizes and that we should not be privileging one type of business over another due to size alone, especially when our perception of who creates jobs and grows the economy does not track with reality"--

"As this century comes to a close, debates over immigration policy, racial preferences, and multiculturalism challenge the consensus that formerly grounded our national culture. The question of our national identity is as urgent as it has ever been in our history. Is our society disintegrating into a collection of separate ethnic enclaves, or is there a way that we can forge a coherent, unified identity as we enter the 21st century?" "In this book Michael Lind provides a comprehensive revisionist view of the American past and offers a concrete proposal for nation-building reforms to strengthen the American future. He shows that the forces of nationalism and the ideal of a trans-racial melting pot need not be in conflict with each other, and he provides a practical agenda for a liberal nationalist revolution that would combine a new color-blind liberalism in civil rights with practical measures for reducing class based barriers to racial integration."--BOOK JACKET.

Michael Lind has been described by Rolling Stone magazine as “that rarest of figures: an intellectual with name recognition.” Now the Whitehead Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC, Lind has been an editor or staff writer for The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and The New Republic and writes frequently for The New York Times and Financial Times. He is the author of more than a dozen books of history, political journalism, and fiction, including a poetry chapbook, When You Are Someone Else (2002); Bluebonnet Girl (2004), a children’s book in verse that won an Oppenheimer Toy Prize for children’s literature; and a narrative poem, The Alamo (1997), which the Los Angeles Times named as one of the best books of the year. Parallel Lives is his first collection of verse. Lind’s themes range from geopolitical issues, interpersonal relationships, art, nature and the American landscape, to the nature of poetry itself. Thomas Disch says of Lind, “To read his spare and elegant poems is to be privy to the councils of the unacknowledged legislators of our own day and age.”