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.

Even in the flattest landscape there are passes where the road first climbs to a peak and then descends into a new valley. Most of these passes are simply topography with little or no difference in climate, language, or culture between the valleys on either side. But some passes are different: they are true divides. History too knows such divides. Once these divides have been crossed, the social and political landscape changes; the social and political climate is different, and so is the social and political language. Some time between 1965 and 1973 we passed over such a divide and entered "the next century." Challenging, insightful, and provocative, Peter Drucker's "The New Realities" anticipates the central issues of a rapidly changing world. When it was initially published, in 1989, some reviewers mistakenly thought "The New Realities" was a book about the future, or in other words, a series of predictions. But, as indicated in the title, the book discusses "realities." Drucker argues that events of the next thirty to forty years, or even further on, had already largely been defined by events of the previous half-century. Thus, Drucker discusses episodes in world history that had not yet happened at the time of the book's initial publication, such as: the archaism of the hope for "salvation by society" in "The End of FDR's America"; the democratization of the Soviet Union in "When the Russian Empire is Gone"; the technology boom of the 1990s in "The Information-Based Organization"; and the evolution of management in "Management as Social Function and Liberal Art." Graced with a new preface by the author that discusses both reactions to the original publication of the book and how important it is for decision-makers to consider the past and present when planning for the future, "The New Realities" is mandatory reading for understanding politics, government, the economy, information technology, and business in an ever-changing world.

This classic book is an ideal introduction to economic thought and the dominance of capitalism, ideal for students of economic theory and history. Now thoroughly revised and updated, this new edition includes a new preface and an additional chapter by the author. Analysing the relationship between economic thought and capitalism from 1750 to the present, Douglas Dowd examines the dynamic interaction of two processes: the historical realities of capitalism and the evolution of economic theory. He demonstrates that the study of economics celebrates capitalism in ways that make it necessary to classify economic science as pure ideology. A thoroughly modern history, this book shows how economics has become ideology. A radical critic of capitalism, Dowd surveys its detrimental impact across the globe and throughout history. The book includes biographical sketches and brief analyses of the major proponents and critics of capitalism throughout history, including Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Thorstein Veblen, Rosa Luxemburg, John Maynard Keynes, Paul Samuelson, Milton Friedman, and Eric Hobsbawm.