National Book Award winner Ron Chernow expertly traces the decline of the big bankers and the rise of small investors. The reader is taken on a fascinating tour of Anglo-American high finance over the past two centuries, with detours into Canadian, German and Japanese finance. As the point of departure for his colourful, panoramic survey, Mr. Chernow poses a historic riddle: Why did the great financial dynasties - the Rothschilds, Barings, Morgans and Warburgs - flare so brilliantly in the 19th and 20th centuries and then enter into a precipitous decline? Why did such heavyweights give way to more anonymous financial conglomerates? And, most curious of all, why have small investors, banded together in mutual funds, suddenly inherited the financial earth? The Death of the Banker shows how American reformers mounted a spirited campaign to pry captive companies loose from their traditional bankers and restored competition to financial markets. In a world criss-crossed by capital flows, the banker will never again exercise such spectacular but arbitrary rule over clients.

"Radical linguist, philosopher, and activist Noam Chomsky is one of the world's foremost intellectuals. Known for his brilliant evisceration of American foreign policy, state capitalism, and the mainstream media, he remains a formidable and unapologetic critic of established authority. On Anarchism sheds a much-needed light on the foundations of Chomsky's thought, specifically his constant questioning of the legitimacy of entrenched power. The book gathers his essays and interviews to provide a short, accessible introduction to his distinctively optimistic brand of anarchism. Chomsky eloquently refutes the notion of anarchism as a fixed idea, suggesting that it is part of a living, evolving tradition, and he disputes the traditional fault lines between anarchism and socialism, emphasizing the power of collective, rather than individualist, action. Including a revealing new interview with Chomsky by well-known writer and blogger Nathan Schneider that assesses Chomsky's writings on anarchism to date, this is a book that is sure to challenge, provoke, and inspire. Profoundly relevant to our times, On Anarchism is a touchstone for political activists and anyone interested in deepening their understanding of anarchism and the man dubbed the "nation's conscience." Incorporating revealing interviews with Chomsky by writer Nathan Schneider that update each in light of today's events, this is a book that is sure to provoke and inspire. Profoundly relevant to our times, Chomsky on Anarchism is a touchstone for activists and anyone interested in politics and the man dubbed "our nation's conscience." "--

"A startling look at how concentrated financial power and consumerism transformed American politics, resulting in the emergence of populism and authoritarianism, the fall of the Democratic Party--while also providing the steps needed to create a new democracy"--

In The Naked Crowd , acclaimed author Jeffrey Rosen makes an impassioned argument about how to preserve freedom, privacy, and security in a post-9/11 world. How we use emerging technologies, he insists, will be crucial to the preservation of essential American ideals. In our zeal to catch terrorists and prevent future catastrophic events, we are going too far—largely because of irrational fears—and violating essential American freedoms. That’s the contention at the center of this persuasive new polemic by Jeffrey Rosen, legal affairs editor of The New Republic , which builds on his award-winning book The Unwanted Gaze . Through wide-ranging reportage and cultural analysis, Rosen argues that it is possible to strike an effective and reasonable balance between liberty and security. Traveling from England to Silicon Valley, he offers a penetrating account of why well-designed laws and technologies have not always been adopted. Drawing on a broad range of sources—from the psychology of fear to the latest Code Orange alerts and airport security technologies—he also explores the reasons that the public, the legislatures, the courts, and technologists have made feel-good choices that give us the illusion of safety without actually making us safer. He describes the dangers of implementing poorly thought out technologies that can make us less free while distracting our attention from responses to terrorism that might work. Rosen also considers the social and technological reasons that the risk-averse democracies of the West continue to demand ever-increasing levels of personal exposure in a search for an illusory and emotional feeling of security. In Web logs, chat rooms, and reality TV shows, an increasing number of citizens clutter the public sphere with private revelations best kept to themselves. The result is the peculiar ordeal of living in the Naked Crowd, in which few aspects of our lives are immune from public scrutiny. With vivid prose and persuasive analysis, The Naked Crowd is both an urgent warning about the choices we face in responding to legitimate fears of terror and a vision for a better future.

Redefining our traditional understanding of the New Deal, this book finally examines this pivotal American era through a sweeping international lens that juxtaposes a struggling democracy with enticing ideologies like Fascism and Communism. Historian Ira Katznelson asserts that, during the 1930s and 1940s, American democracy was rescued yet distorted by a unified band of southern lawmakers who safeguarded racial segregation as they built a new national state to manage capitalism and assert global power. --From publisher description

Since 2000, America s most ambitious young evangelicals have been making their way to Patrick Henry College, a small Christian school just outside the nation s capital. Most of them are homeschoolers whose idealism and discipline put the average American teenager to shame. At "God s Harvard" they are groomed to become tomorrow s elite. Diplomas in hand, they are dispatched to the front lines of politics, entertainment, and science, where they will lead the battle to take back a godless nation. Hanna Rosin spent a year and a half embedded at the college, following students from the campus to the White House, Congress, conservative think tanks, Hollywood, and other centers of influence. Her account captures this nerve center of the evangelical movement at a moment of maximum influence and also of crisis, as it struggles to avoid the temptations of modern life and still remake the world in its own image. "

Based on the most up-to-date sources, as well as extensive research and direct observation, Japan as Number One analyzes the island nation's development into one of the world's most effective industrial powers, in terms of not only economic productivity but also its ability to govern efficiently, to eduate its citizens, to control crime, to alleviate energy shortages, and to lessen pollution. Ezra Vogel employs criteria that America has traditionally used to measure success in his thoughtful demonstration of how and why Japanese institutions have coped far more effectively than their American counterparts.

A comprehensive look at the decline of the United States offers non-ideological remedies on how to overcome national self-doubt, reclaim optimism, and secure a prosperous future for American citizens.

Gatorade is an enthralling story, brought to life in bright color and sharp detail in this book as journalist and author Darren Rovell chronicles every astonishing milestone of the company's history. With unprecedented access to the inventors, the marketers, the analysts and observers, and key company figures past and present, Rovell recounts the sweat-drenched University of Florida football practices, the first (unpalatable) prototypes, and the commercial and financial interest that quickly took hold following the drink's first on-field successes. Then came the advertising, sponsorships, product placements (many of them fortuitous), and finally the two milestones that cemented Gatorade's iconic status once and for all -- the ubiquitous Gatorade bath and the Michael Jordan "Be Like Mike" endorsement deal. With refreshing candor, First in Thirst also offers an inside look at all the aspects that went into building the brand, such as: negotiations, battles, lawsuits, mergers and acquisitions, product strategies, lucky breaks, and even the mishaps that have attended Gatorade's reign as the 800-pound gorilla of the sports-drink scene. First in Thirst identifies the nine Gatorade Rules, business principles that have helped Gatorade become one of the most dominant brands ever. By adhering to these principles, businesses in other industries may achieve greater brand recognition and market share. Long before America knew what "deep-down body thirst" was, a team of university scientists had already invented something to quench it. This book is the story of the product and the company, and of America's fascination with the one and only Gatorade.

"Bad News is a response to Thomas Frank's 2004 book "What's the Matter with Kansas." I ask the same question he asked about the right, but about the left: Why is the media obsessed with racism, even though it's getting objectively better by every measure we have? I argue that the liberal media is mainstreaming a woke culture war based on ideas that were relegated to the academic fringe as recently as a decade ago because it's in their economic interests to do so. It explores how digital media and social media supplied journalists, now part of the American elite, with an alternative way to feel like heroes while further consolidating power and wealth in the hands of the few rather than the many. The book then explores the larger context of the great American class divide, and how journalism has been both a product and accelerator of inequality"--

In the summer of 1940, fewer than three thousand young fighter pilots of the Royal Air Force stood between Hitler and the victory that seemed almost within his grasp. In this superb history of three epic months that saved the world, Michael Korda brilliantly re-creates the intensity of combat in "the long, delirious, burning blue" of the sky above southern England—while tracing, perhaps for the first time, the entire complex web of political, diplomatic, scientific, industrial, and human decisions during the 1930s that inexorably led to the world's first, greatest, and most decisive air battle. With Wings Like Eagles brings to vivid life the extraordinary men and women on both sides of the conflict—from Winston Churchill, Neville Chamberlain, and Reichsmarschall Hermann GÖring to the ground crews, the German pilots, the American volunteers, and the courageous airmen and airwomen of the RAF.

A witty and penetrating look at the celluloid culture of the 1960s by the Village Voice 's celebrated film critic. In The Dream Life , Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman turns his attention to the 1960s, the era when politics and culture became one. With wildly entertaining reinterpretations of key Hollywood movies (such as Dr. Strangelove, Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch , and Shampoo ), Hoberman reconstructs the hidden political history of 1960s cinema. Meanwhile, against the pageantry of four national elections1960 to 1972he describes the formation of America's spectacular, image-laden political culture. In the era when the missile gap, the sexual revolution, and the Vietnam War became inseparable from the triumph of television, the development of political image-making, and the advent of Pop Art, American politics, mass media, and publicity became the new social spectacle. Through meditations on the personas of Che Guevara, John Wayne, Patty Hearst, Jane Fonda, Ronald Reagan, and Dirty Harry, Hoberman moves deftly between the political backgrounds of movies and the fantastic dimensions of politics, producing a brilliant and comic cultural history of the rise of our mass-mediated politics.

Foreign affairs journalist Kaplan lets readers experience up close the American military worldwide in the air, at sea, and on the ground: flying in a B-2 bomber, living on a nuclear submarine, and traveling with a Stryker brigade on missions around the world. Provided unprecedented access, Kaplan moves from destroyers off the coast of Indonesia to submarines in the central Pacific, from simulated Iraqi training grounds in Alaska to technology bases in Las Vegas. He goes deep into their highly technical and exotic worlds, and tells this story through the words and perspectives of the enlisted personnel and junior officers themselves--men and women who, as he writes, have "had their national identities as Americans engraved in sharp bas-relief." He not only conveys the vast scope of America's military commitments, but also shows us astonishing and vital operations as they unfold--from the point of view of the troops themselves.--From publisher description

A ground-breaking work of nation building, this unique biographical book by many of English and French Canada's best-known writers and thinkers -- Margaret Atwood, Lucien Bouchard, Dr. Samantha Nutt, Ken Dryden, etc. -- tells the story of the extraordinary legacy of the French contribution to our very way of life. In 1913, schoolgirls found a heavy metal plaque peeking out of the soil in St-Pierre, South Dakota. On it they saw engraved characters and signs they could not decipher. They took the plaque back home, and somehow, it found its way into the hands of a local historian who immediately realized the importance of the artifact. One hundred and seventy years earlier, French-Canadian explorer Pierre Gaultier de la Vérendrye had written about his travels to the west in search of the elusive "Western Sea." In his journal, he remembered: "I placed upon a hillock near the fort a lead plaque with the arms and inscription of the King." That was the plaque found by the children, the proof that de la Vérendrye was the first white man to set eyes on the Rockies, 60 years before Lewis and Clark's famous expedition. Traces of the French-Canadians' contribution to North American history can be found in all regions of the continent. More often than not, we are unaware of or indifferent towards these signs. Yet the descendants of the French travelled farther than one would expect, exploring the land and a wide variety of fields of human activity (science, arts, economy, etc.). Through their audacity, their courage and their determination, they shaped Canada -- and, to a smaller but still significant extent -- the United States. In a unique partnership with Les Éditions La Presse, Legacy is the story of a dozen French-Canadian pioneers, from the era of Nouvelle-France up to the 20th century. This ambitious book project will take the form of a series of biographical essays written by Canadian personalities and leading authors. Through the lives of these extraordinary persons, the authors will reflect on the French-Canadian legacy. They are all convinced that Canada would not be what it is today were it not for these French-speaking Canadians who explored the land, hung on to their culture while respecting that of others, longed for peace, fought with courage, and stood up for a brand of humanism that helped shape the country we live in today.

LITERARY STUDIES: GENERAL. Fascinating, incisive, intelligent and never afraid of being controversial, Elaine Showalter introduces us to more than 250 writers. Here are the famous and expected names, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Willa Cather, Dorothy Parker, Flannery O'Connor, Gwendolyn Brooks, Grace Paley, Toni Morrison, and Jodi Picoult. And also many successful and acclaimed yet little-known writers, from the early American bestselling novelist Catherine Sedgwick to the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Susan Glaspell. A JURY OF HER PEERS is an irresistible invitation to discover great authors never before encountered and to return to familiar books with a deeper appreciation. It is a monumental work that enriches our understanding of American literary history and culture.

From an award-winning historian, a stirring (and timely) narrative history of American labor from the dawn of the industrial age to the present day.

"They were abolitionists, speculators, slave owners, government officials, and occasional politicians. They were observers of the anxieties and dramas of empire. And they were from one family. The Inner Life of Empires tells the intimate history of the Johnstones--four sisters and seven brothers who lived in Scotland and around the globe in the fast-changing eighteenth century. Piecing together their voyages, marriages, debts, and lawsuits, and examining their ideas, sentiments, and values, renowned historian Emma Rothschild illuminates a tumultuous period that created the modern economy, the British Empire, and the philosophical Enlightenment. One of the sisters joined a rebel army, was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle, and escaped in disguise in 1746. Her younger brother was a close friend of Adam Smith and David Hume. Another brother was fluent in Persian and Bengali, and married to a celebrated poet. He was the owner of a slave known only as "Bell or Belinda," who journeyed from Calcutta to Virginia, was accused in Scotland of infanticide, and was the last person judged to be a slave by a court in the British isles. In Grenada, India, Jamaica, and Florida, the Johnstones embodied the connections between European, American, and Asian empires. Their family history offers insights into a time when distinctions between the public and private, home and overseas, and slavery and servitude were in constant flux. Based on multiple archives, documents, and letters, The Inner Life of Empires looks at one family's complex story to describe the origins of the modern political, economic, and intellectual world"-- Provided by publisher.

Many critics attack federal judges as anti-democratic elitists, activists out of step with the mainstream of American thought. But others argue that judges should stand alone as the ultimate guardians of American values, placing principle before the views of the people.In The Most Democratic Branch, Jeffrey Rosen disagrees with both assertions. Contrary to what interest groups may claim, he contends that, from the days of John Marshall right up to the present, the federal courts by and large have reflected the opinions of the mainstream. More important, he argues that the Supreme Court is most successful when it defers to the constitutional views of the American people, as represented most notably by Congress and the Presidency. And on the rare occasion when they departed from the consensus, the result has often been a disaster.To illustrate, Rosen provides a penetrating look at some of the most important Supreme Court cases in American history--cases involving racial equality, affirmative action, abortion, gay rights and gay marriage, the right to die, electoral disputes, and civil liberties in wartime. Rosen shows that the most notorious constitutional decisions in American history--the ones that have been most strenuously criticized, such as Dred Scott or Roe v. Wade--have gone against mainstream opinion. By contrast, the most successful decisions--from Marbury v. Madison to Brown v. Board of Education--have avoided imposing constitutional principles over the wishes of the people. Rosen concludes that the judiciary works best when it identifies the constitutional principles accepted by a majority of Americans, and enforces them unequivocally as fundamental law.Jeffrey Rosen is one of the most respected legal experts writing today, a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine and the Legal Affairs Editor of The New Republic. The provocative arguments that he puts forth here are bound to fuel heated debate at a time when the federal judiciary is already the focus of fierce criticism.

"When most people think of the history of modern conservatism, they think of Ronald Reagan, with his politics and policies front and center. Yet this narrow view of a movement obscures the whole, leaving many to question: How did Donald Trump win the presidency? And what is the future of the Republican party? In The Right, distinguished journalist Matthew Continetti shifts this lens, arguing that an understanding of the history of the pre-Reagan right is crucial to understanding the past and determining the future of the movement. The Right is a sweeping historical account of American conservatism's evolution, from the beginning of the Progressive Era through the present. It tells the story of how conservatism in the United States began as networks of intellectuals, often acting in concert with political figures, developed a critique of Progressivism and of New Deal liberalism, and institutionalized this vision in magazines, think tanks, nonprofits, and political entities and campaigns. Over time, these thinkers attracted new adherents, including former Democrats and evangelical Christians, and built up a conservative superstructure of organizations and media outlets that turned ideas into policy. With the end of the Cold War, this conservative superstructure found itself under attack from dissidents for whom it was too globalist, too corporate, and too open to unrestricted immigration. The superstructure held for two decades but buckled under the pressures of the second Iraq War and the global financial crisis of 2008. Just as the Vietnam War ended the reign of Cold War liberals in the Democratic Party, the Iraq War ended the reign of post-Cold War conservatives in the Republican Party, and the right began to resemble other national populist movements around the world. Drawing out the tensions between conservatism and populism, and between the conservative desire for mainstream acceptance and the pull of extremism, Continetti argues that the more one studies conservatism's past, the more one becomes convinced of its future. Deeply researched and brilliantly told, The Right is essential reading for anyone looking to understand the American right"--

America's most inspirational voices, in their own words: "If you're looking for a reason to act and dream again, you'll find it in the pages of this book" ( Chicago Tribune ). Published when Studs Terkel was ninety-one years old, this astonishing oral history tackles one of the famed journalist's most elusive subjects: Hope. Where does it come from? What are its essential qualities? How do we sustain it in the darkest of times? An alternative, more personal chronicle of the "American century," Hope Dies Last is a testament to the indefatigable spirit that Studs has always embodied, and an inheritance for those who, by taking a stand, are making concrete the dreams of today. A former death row inmate who served nearly twenty years for a crime he did not commit discusses his never-ending fight for justice. Tom Hayden, author of The Port Huron Statement , contemplates the legacy of 1960s student activism. Liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith reflects on the enduring problem of corporate malfeasance. From a doctor who teaches his young students compassion to the retired brigadier general who flew the Enola Gay over Hiroshima, these interviews tell us much about the power of the American dream and the force of individuals who advocate for a better world. With grace and warmth, Terkel's subjects express their secret hopes and dreams. Taken together, this collection of interviews tells an inspiring story of optimism and persistence, told in voices that resonate with the eloquence of conviction. "The value of Hope Dies Last lies not in what it teaches readers about its narrow subject, but in the fascinating stories it reveals, and the insight it allows into the vast range of human experience." -- The A.V. Club "Very Terkelesque--by now the man requires an adjective of his own." --Margaret Atwood, The New York Times Review of Books "An American treasure." --Cornel West