NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The fast-paced inside story of America’s plunge into a volatile rivalry with the other two great nuclear powers—Xi Jinping’s China and Vladimir Putin’s Russia—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author of The Perfect Weapon “[A] cogent, revealing account of how a generation of American officials have grappled with dangerous developments in the post-Cold War era . . . vividly captures Washington.”—The New York Times (Editors’ Choice) ONE OF NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR For years, the United States was confident that the newly democratic Russia and increasingly wealthy China could be lured into a Western-led order that promised prosperity and relative peace—so long as they agreed to Washington’s terms. By the time America emerged from the age of terrorism, it was clear that this had been a fantasy. Now the three powers are engaged in a high-stakes struggle for military, economic, political, and technological supremacy, with nations around the world pressured to take sides. Yet all three are discovering that they are maneuvering for influence in a far more turbulent world than they imagined. Based on a remarkable array of interviews with top officials from five presidential administrations, U.S. intelligence agencies, foreign governments, and tech companies, Sanger unfolds a riveting narrative spun around the era’s critical questions: Will the mistakes Putin made in his invasion of Ukraine prove his undoing and will he reach for his nuclear arsenal—or will the West’s famously short attention span signal Kyiv’s doom? Will Xi invade Taiwan? Will both men deepen their partnership to undercut America’s dominance? And can a politically dysfunctional America still lead the world? Taking readers from the battlefields of Ukraine—where Russia uses bullets from North Korea and drones from Iran—to the Taiwan headquarters where the world’s most advanced computer chips are produced and on to tense debates in the White House Situation Room, New Cold Wars is a remarkable first-draft history chronicling America’s return to superpower conflict, the choices that lie ahead, and what is at stake for the United States and the world.

From the legendary former Fed Chairman and the acclaimed Economist writer and historian, the full, epic story of America's evolution from a small patchwork of threadbare colonies to the most powerful engine of wealth and innovation the world has ever seen. Shortlisted for the 2018 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award From even the start of his fabled career, Alan Greenspan was duly famous for his deep understanding of even the most arcane corners of the American economy, and his restless curiosity to know even more. To the extent possible, he has made a science of understanding how the US economy works almost as a living organism--how it grows and changes, surges and stalls. He has made a particular study of the question of productivity growth, at the heart of which is the riddle of innovation. Where does innovation come from, and how does it spread through a society? And why do some eras see the fruits of innovation spread more democratically, and others, including our own, see the opposite? In Capitalism in America , Greenspan distills a lifetime of grappling with these questions into a thrilling and profound master reckoning with the decisive drivers of the US economy over the course of its history. In partnership with the celebrated Economist journalist and historian Adrian Wooldridge, he unfolds a tale involving vast landscapes, titanic figures, triumphant breakthroughs, enlightenment ideals as well as terrible moral failings. Every crucial debate is here--from the role of slavery in the antebellum Southern economy to the real impact of FDR's New Deal to America's violent mood swings in its openness to global trade and its impact. But to read Capitalism in America is above all to be stirred deeply by the extraordinary productive energies unleashed by millions of ordinary Americans that have driven this country to unprecedented heights of power and prosperity. At heart, the authors argue, America's genius has been its unique tolerance for the effects of creative destruction, the ceaseless churn of the old giving way to the new, driven by new people and new ideas. Often messy and painful, creative destruction has also lifted almost all Americans to standards of living unimaginable to even the wealthiest citizens of the world a few generations past. A sense of justice and human decency demands that those who bear the brunt of the pain of change be protected, but America has always accepted more pain for more gain, and its vaunted rise cannot otherwise be understood, or its challenges faced, without recognizing this legacy. For now, in our time, productivity growth has stalled again, stirring up the populist furies. There's no better moment to apply the lessons of history to the most pressing question we face, that of whether the United States will preserve its preeminence, or see its leadership pass to other, inevitably less democratic powers.

"Why are housing prices in America so unbelievably high, especially in the country's most desirable locations? The superficial answer is "supply and demand," but the deep answer-the reason supply is so low-is draconian housing regulation. In Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation, economist Bryan Caplan makes the economic and philosophical case for radical deregulation of this massive market-freeing property owners to build as tall and dense as they wish. Not only would the average price of housing be cut in half, but the building boom unleashed by deregulation would simultaneously reduce inequality, increase social mobility, promote economic growth, reduce homelessness, increase birth rates, and help the environment. It's surprising then, that despite all these benefits, housing deregulation is universally unpopular with policymakers. Combining visually stunning graphics and careful interdisciplinary research, Build, Baby, Build, takes readers on a journey through what is wrong with the housing market-and what we can do about it"--

Philosophy professor Christina Sommers has exposed a disturbing development: how a group of zealots, claiming to speak for all women, are promoting a dangerous new agenda that threatens our most cherished ideals and sets women against men in all spheres of life. In case after case, Sommers shows how these extremists have propped up their arguments with highly questionable but well-funded research, presenting inflammatory and often inaccurate information and stifling any semblance of free and open scrutiny. Trumpeted as orthodoxy, the resulting "findings" on everything from rape to domestic abuse to economic bias to the supposed crisis in girls' self-esteem perpetuate a view of women as victims of the "patriarchy.".

"From the award-winning journalist and best-selling author of America's Bitter Pill: a tour de force examination of 1) how and why major American institutions no longer serve us as they should, causing a deep rift between the vulnerable majority and the protected few, and 2) how some individuals and organizations are laying the foundation for real, lasting change. In this revelatory narrative covering the years 1967 to 2017, Steven Brill gives us a stunningly cogent picture of the broken system at the heart of our society. He shows us how, over the last half-century, America's core values--meritocracy, innovation, due process, free speech, and even democracy itself--have somehow managed to power its decline into dysfunction. They have isolated our best and brightest, whose positions at the top have never been more secure or more remote. The result has been an erosion of responsibility and accountability, an epidemic of shortsightedness, an increasingly hollow economic and political center, and millions of Americans gripped by apathy and hopelessness. By examining the people and forces behind the rise of big-money lobbying, legal and financial engineering, the demise of private-sector unions, and a hamstrung bureaucracy, Brill answers the question on everyone's mind: How did we end up this way? Finally, he introduces us to those working quietly and effectively to repair the damages. At once a diagnosis of our national ills, a history of their development, and a prescription for a brighter future, Tailspin is a work of riveting journalism--and a welcome antidote to political despair"--

Traces U.S. foreign policy objectives throughout the Cold War and offers a commentary on the development of the post-Cold War economic and military structure

The former dean of the Yale School of Management and Undersecretary of Commerce in the Clinton administration chronicles the 1971 August meeting at Camp David, where President Nixon unilaterally ended the last vestiges of the gold standard--breaking the link between gold and the dollar--transforming the entire global monetary system. Over the course of three days--from August 13 to 15, 1971--at a secret meeting at Camp David, President Richard Nixon and his brain trust changed the course of history. Before that weekend, all national currencies were valued to the U.S. dollar, which was convertible to gold at a fixed rate. That system, established by the Bretton Woods Agreement at the end of World War II, was the foundation of the international monetary system that helped fuel the greatest expansion of middle-class prosperity the world has ever seen. In making his decision, Nixon shocked world leaders, bankers, investors, traders and everyone involved in global finance. Jeffrey E. Garten argues that many of the roots of America's dramatic retrenchment in world affairs began with that momentous event that was an admission that America could no longer afford to uphold the global monetary system. It opened the way for massive market instability and speculation that has plagued the world economy ever since, but at the same time it made possible the gigantic expansion of trade and investment across borders which created our modern era of once unimaginable progress. Based on extensive historical research and interviews with several participants at Camp David, and informed by Garten's own insights from positions in four presidential administrations and on Wall Street, Three Days at Camp David chronicles this critical turning point, analyzes its impact on the American economy and world markets, and explores its ramifications now and for the future.

"The United States bills itself as the land of opportunity, a place where anyone can achieve success and a better life through hard work and determination. But the facts tell a different story--the U.S. today lags behind most other developed nations in measures of inequality and economic mobility. For decades, wages have stagnated for the majority of workers while economic gains have disproportionately gone to the top one percent. Education, housing, and health care--essential ingredients for individual success--are growing ever more expensive. Deeply rooted structural discrimination continues to hold down women and people of color, and more than one-fifth of all American children now live in poverty. These trends are on track to become even worse in the future. Some economists claim that today's bleak conditions are inevitable consequences of market outcomes, globalization, and technological progress. If we want greater equality, they argue, we have to sacrifice growth. This is simply not true. American inequality is the result of misguided structural rules that actually constrict economic growth. We have stripped away worker protections and family support systems, created a tax system that rewards short-term gains over long-term investment, offered a de facto public safety net to too-big-to-fail financial institutions, and chosen monetary and fiscal policies that promote wealth over full employment."--Amazon.com.

Publisher's description: Robert Rubin was sworn in as the seventieth U.S. Secretary of the Treasury in January 1995 in a brisk ceremony attended only by his wife and a few colleagues. As soon as the ceremony was over, he began an emergency meeting with President Bill Clinton on the financial crisis in Mexico. This was not only a harbinger of things to come during what would prove to be a rocky period in the global economy; it also captured the essence of Rubin himself--short on formality, quick to get into the nitty-gritty. From his early years in the storied arbitrage department at Goldman Sachs to his current position as chairman of the executive committee of Citigroup, Robert Rubin has been a major figure at the center of the American financial system. He was a key player in the longest economic expansion in U.S. history.

In the past, government and business were as much partners as rivals, resulting in broad-based growth and healthy social development. But advocates of anti-government market fundamentalism are intent on scrapping the instrument of nearly a century of unprecedented economic and social progress. Hacker and Pierson examine why what's good for American business elites and what's good for Americans have become misaligned.

When it was first published a quarter of a century ago, Richard Posner's exposition and defense of an economic approach to antitrust law was a jeremiad against the intellectual disarray that then characterized the field. As other perspectives on antitrust law have fallen away, Posner's book has played a major role in transforming the field of antitrust law into a body of economically rational principles largely in accord with the ideas set forth in the first edition. Today's antitrust professionals may disagree on specific practices and rules, but most litigators, prosecutors, judges, and scholars agree that the primary goal of antitrust laws should be to promote economic welfare, and that economic theory should be used to determine how well business practices conform to that goal. In this thoroughly revised edition, Posner explains the economic approach to new generations of lawyers and students. He updates and amplifies his approach as it applies to the developments, both legal and economic, in the antitrust field since 1976. The "new economy," for example, has presented a host of difficult antitrust questions, and in an entirely new chapter, Posner explains how the economic approach can be applied to new industries such as software manufacturers, Internet service providers, and those that provide communications equipment and services. "The antitrust laws are here to stay," Posner writes, "and the practical question is how to administer them better-more rationally, more accurately, more expeditiously, more efficiently." This fully revised classic will continue to be the standard work in the field.

"In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that the city of New London, Connecticut, could condemn fifteen residential properties in order to transfer them to a new private owner. Although the Fifth Amendment only permits the taking of private property for 'public use,' the court ruled that the transfer of condemned land to private parties for 'economic development' is permitted by the Constitution - even if the government cannot prove that the expected development will ever actually happen. The court's decision in Kelo v. City of New London empowered the grasping hand of the state at the expense of the invisible hand of the market. In this detailed study of one of the most controversial Supreme Court cases in modern times, Ilya Somin argues that Kelo was a grave error. Economic development and 'blight' condemnations are unconstitutional under both originalist and most 'living constitution' theories of legal interpretation.

The Cruel Years provides readers with a vivid picture of what life was like a hundred years ago, not for the rich and famous but for ordinary working Americans. The story is told in the words of twenty-two fascinating people who lived by laboring long hours at farms and factories and mines. A preface by Howard Zinn and an introduction by William Loren Katz provide an easy-to-follow historical map that places these hard-hitting, first-person narratives in the context of their troubled times and within the larger picture of U.S. growth and development. Here are the no-nonsense words of a young immigrant trying to survive as a sweatshop operator in New York City, a hard working farmer's wife who has writing ambitions; a black southern sharecropper seeking fulfillment under a new system of slavery; a young Puerto Rican passing the Statue of Liberty and ready for new challenges; a Chinese immigrant, a Mexican immigrant, and a Japanese immigrant struggling to rise from lower rungs on the social and economic ladder; an Irish girl of sixteen deciding to become a political agitator; a black southern woman trying to fend off the hurts of Jim Crow; a coal miner telling of the lethal dangers of his work; and a black cowhand rejoicing in the thrill of the cattle trails.

"David Wessel's incredible tale of how Washington works-and why the rich keep getting richer-starts when a Silicon Valley entrepreneur concocts an idea that will save money on his taxes and spins it as a way to ostensibly help poor people. He organizes and pays for an effective lobbying effort that pushes his idea into law with little scrutiny or fine-tuning by congressional or Treasury tax experts-and few safeguards against abuse. With an unbeatable pair of high-profile sponsors, bumper-sticker simplicity and deft political marketing, the Opportunity Zone became an unnoticed part of the 2017 Trump tax bill. The gold rush followed immediately thereafter. In Only the Rich Can Play, Wessel follows the money to see who profited from this plan that was supposed to spur development of blighted areas and help people out of poverty: the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas, the Portland (Oregon) Ritz-Carlton, the Mall of America, and self-storage facilities-lucrative areas where the one percent can park money profitably and avoid capital gains taxes. And the best part: unlike other provisions for eliminating capital gains taxes (inheritance, for example) you don't have to die to take advantage of this one. Wessel provides vivid portraits of the proselytizers, political influencers, motivational speakers, consultants, real estate dealmakers, and individual money-seekers looking to take advantage of this twenty-first century bonanza. He looks at places for which Opportunity Zones were supposedly designed (Baltimore, for example) and how little money they've drawn. And he finds a couple of places (Erie, PA) where zones are actually doing what they were supposed to, a lesson on how a better designed program might have helped more left-behind places. Readers will feel outraged as Wessel gives us the gritty reality, the dark underbelly of a system tilted in favor of the few, with the many left out in the cold"--

The initial two essays, "Domestic Structure and Foreign Policy" and "Central Issues of American Foreign Policy," appeared in the original edition of this volume and have been retained as backdrops for fifteen major addresses delivered by Mr. Kissinger over the past four years. The new selections include a statement to Congress that traces the main lines of d�tente policy; a review of the step-by-step process of negotiations in the Middle East; an analysis of efforts to achieve accords, with the Soviet Union on strategic arms limitation without imperiling American national security; a speech to the United Nations on the imperative of establishing a balanced global approach to economic development and resource conservation; several papers that candidly appraise prospects for new ties between the United States and the nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America; and one that sets forth measures to strengthen the bonds among the industrial democracies. In their scope and detail, these documents constitute a remarkable set of designs, blueprints, and working drawings by a master architect of foreign policy.

Focusing on the design and implementation of computer-based automatic machine tools, David F. Noble challenges the idea that technology has a life of its own. Technology has been both a convenient scapegoat and a universal solution, serving to disarm critics, divert attention, depoliticize debate, and dismiss discussion of the fundamental antagonisms and inequalities that continue to beset America. This provocative study of the postwar automation of the American metal-working industry—the heart of a modern industrial economy—explains how dominant institutions like the great corporations, the universities, and the military, along with the ideology of modern engineering shape, the development of technology. Noble shows how the system of "numerical control," perfected at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and put into general industrial use, was chosen over competing systems for reasons other than the technical and economic superiority typically advanced by its promoters. Numerical control took shape at an MIT laboratory rather than in a manufacturing setting, and a market for the new technology was created, not by cost-minded producers, but instead by the U. S. Air Force. Competing methods, equally promising, were rejected because they left control of production in the hands of skilled workers, rather than in those of management or programmers. Noble demonstrates that engineering design is influenced by political, economic, managerial, and sociological considerations, while the deployment of equipment—illustrated by a detailed case history of a large General Electric plant in Massachusetts—can become entangled with such matters as labor classification, shop organization, managerial responsibility, and patterns of authority. In its examination of technology as a human, social process, Forces of Production is a path-breaking contribution to the understanding of this phenomenon in American society.

Father of the birth control pill, developer of antihistamines, founder of biomedical companies, teacher of world-class chemists, best-selling novelist.... As The Scientist notes, "Few can match Carl Djerassi's juggling act for success and longevity". Here is Djerassi's remarkable autobiography. Blending vivid descriptions of the lucrative world of drug development with controversial chapters on the politics of contraception and poignant disclosures about his personal life, this book tells the story of one of the most productive and socially conscious chemists working today. The Pill, Pygmy Chimps, and Degas' Horse tells how Djerassi, while still in his twenties and leading a small team in an obscure laboratory in Mexico City, used a locally grown yam first to synthesize cortisone and then, within twelve months, to create the first steroid effective as a birth control pill. Dubbed for this latter work "the father of the pill", a title he often shares with Gregory Pincus and John Rock, who performed the biological and clinical studies to confirm the pill's efficacy in humans, Djerassi has spent a lifetime thinking and rethinking, discussing and debating, the social, economic, and biological consequences of the changed attitudes toward contraception engendered by the pill. In two riveting chapters entitled "The Pill at Twenty" and "The Pill at Forty: What Now?" Djerassi recounts the fascinating history of the pill's journey from its first days in the laboratory to widespread public use--from being hailed as an agent of the sexual revolution to condemnation as an agent of the new promiscuity, to being accused of being an expression of the scientific community's sexism (Why was there no malebirth control pill?). And then, in a powerful consideration of where the politics of contraception have taken us, he discusses why so few innovations in contraception are being investigated today, and why even fewer are making their way to the public. The Pill, Pygmy Chimps, and Degas' Horse chronicles Djerassi's many successful careers in science, business, the academy, and the arts (he is a published poet and novelist, as well as the founder of an artists' colony). His growing appreciation for the soft side of science--its human and humane aspects--have long been reflected in the courses he teaches at Stanford, in the plot of his novel, Cantor's Dilemma, and in his decision to found one of the first environmentally aware pesticide companies. In this intellectually challenging book, the reader is let into the fertile mind and psyche of one of the few Renaissance men of twentieth-century science.

The all-encompassing embrace of world capitalism at the beginning of the twenty-first century was generally attributed to the superiority of competitive markets. Globalization had appeared to be the natural outcome of this unstoppable process. But today, with global markets roiling and increasingly reliant on state intervention to stay afloat, it has become clear that markets and states aren’t straightforwardly opposing forces. In this groundbreaking work, Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin demonstrate the intimate relationship between modern capitalism and the American state, including its role as an “informal empire” promoting free trade and capital movements. Through a powerful historical survey, they show how the US has superintended the restructuring of other states in favor of competitive markets and coordinated the management of increasingly frequent financial crises. The Making of Global Capitalism , through its highly original analysis of the first great economic crisis of the twenty-first century, identifies the centrality of the social conflicts that occur within states rather than between them. These emerging fault lines hold out the possibility of new political movements transforming nation states and transcending global markets.

Frances Fox Piven, one of the country's most celebrated social scientists, raises questions others have not. She examines the ways the war on terror served to shore up the Bush administration's political base and analyzes the manner in which flag-waving politicians used the emotional fog of war to further their regressive social and economic agendas. Always in the past governments that made war sooner or later tried to reward their peoples for the blood and wealth they were forced to sacrifice. During World War II, tax rates on the wealthy rose to 90 percent; toward the end of the Vietnam War, eighteen-year-olds were given the right to vote. In this war, taxes on the rich have been slashed, and democratic rights are being rolled back. Even veteran's benefits have been sharply reduced. The War at Home makes sense of these developments by putting the current domestic fallout of war in the context of history - and by turning an unsentimental eye on the domestic motivations of American militarism.