America has a huge problem. It faces four major challenges, on which its future depends, and it is failing to meet them. In "That Used to Be Us," Thomas L. Friedman, one of our most influential columnists, and Michael Mandelbaum, one of our leading foreign policy thinkers, analyze those challenges--globalization, the revolution in information technology, the nation's chronic deficits, and its pattern of energy consumption--and spell out what we need to do "now" to rediscover America and rise to this moment. They explain how the end of the cold war blinded the nation to the need to address these issues. They show how our history, when properly understood, provides the key to addressing them, and explain how the paralysis of our political system and the erosion of key American values have made it impossible for us to carry out the policies the country needs. They offer a way out of the trap into which the country has fallen, which includes the rediscovery of some of our most valuable traditions and the creation of a new, third-party movement. "That Used to Be Us" is both a searching exploration of the American condition today and a rousing manifesto for American renewal. "As we were writing this book," Friedman and Mandelbaum explain, "we found that when we shared the title with people, they would often nod ruefully and ask: 'But does it have a happy ending?' Our answer is that we can write a happy ending, but it is up to the country--to all of us--to determine whether it is fiction or nonfiction. We need to study harder, save more, spend less, invest wisely, and get back to the formula that made us successful as a country in every previous historical turn. What we need is not novel or foreign, but values, priorities, and practices embedded in our history and culture, applied time and again to propel us forward as a country. That is all part of our past. That used to be us and can be again--if we will it."

The New York Times bestselling author of The Forgotten Man and Coolidge offers a stunning revision of our last great period of idealism, the 1960s, with burning relevance for our contemporary challenges. "Great Society is accurate history that reads like a novel, covering the high hopes and catastrophic missteps of our well-meaning leaders." --Alan Greenspan Today, a battle rages in our country. Many Americans are attracted to socialism and economic redistribution while opponents of those ideas argue for purer capitalism. In the 1960s, Americans sought the same goals many seek now: an end to poverty, higher standards of living for the middle class, a better environment and more access to health care and education. Then, too, we debated socialism and capitalism, public sector reform versus private sector advancement. Time and again, whether under John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, or Richard Nixon, the country chose the public sector. Yet the targets of our idealism proved elusive. What's more, Johnson's and Nixon's programs shackled millions of families in permanent government dependence. Ironically, Shlaes argues, the costs of entitlement commitments made a half century ago preclude the very reforms that Americans will need in coming decades. In Great Society, Shlaes offers a powerful companion to her legendary history of the 1930s, The Forgotten Man, and shows that in fact there was scant difference between two presidents we consider opposites: Johnson and Nixon. Just as technocratic military planning by "the Best and the Brightest" made failure in Vietnam inevitable, so planning by a team of the domestic best and brightest guaranteed fiasco at home. At once history and biography, Great Society sketches moving portraits of the characters in this transformative period, from U.S. Presidents to the visionary UAW leader Walter Reuther, the founders of Intel, and Federal Reserve chairmen William McChesney Martin and Arthur Burns. Great Society casts new light on other figures too, from Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, to the socialist Michael Harrington and the protest movement leader Tom Hayden. Drawing on her classic economic expertise and deep historical knowledge, Shlaes upends the traditional narrative of the era, providing a damning indictment of the consequences of thoughtless idealism with striking relevance for today. Great Society captures a dramatic contest with lessons both dark and bright for our own time.

From Jeff Pearlman--the New York Times best-selling author of Three Ring Circus--comes the rollicking, outrageous story of the USFL, full of larger-than-life characters and you-can't-make-this-up stories featuring some of the biggest celebrities and buffoons in the game. The United States Football League--known fondly to millions of sports fans as the USFL--did not merely challenge the NFL, but cause its owners and executives to collectively shudder. In its three seasons from 1983-85, it secured multiple television deals, drew millions of fans and launched the careers of legends such as Steve Young, Jim Kelly, Herschel Walker, and Reggie White. But then it died beneath the weight of a particularly egotistical and bombastic team owner--a New York businessman named Donald J. Trump. In Football for a Buck, Jeff Pearlman draws on more than four hundred interviews to unearth all the salty, untold stories of one of the craziest sports entities to have ever captivated America. From 1980s drug excess to airplane brawls and player-coach punch outs, to backroom business deals and some of the most enthralling and revolutionary football ever seen, Pearlman transports readers back in time to this crazy, boozy, audacious, unforgettable era of the game. He shows how fortunes were made and lost on the backs of professional athletes and how, forty years ago, Trump was already a scoundrel and a spoiler. For fans of Terry Pluto's Loose Balls or Jim Bouton's Ball Four and of course Pearlman's own stranger-than-fiction narratives, Football for a Buck is sports as high entertainment--and a cautionary tale of the dangers of ego and excess.

The fullest account to date of German Jews' struggle for economic survival under the Third Reich.

Dean Baker, codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research recounts the strategies used by the country's top economic policymakers to conceal their failure to recognize the housing bubble or take steps to rein it in before it grew to unprecedented levels, resulting in the loss of millions of jobs, homes, and the life savings of tens o...

This book offers a unique insight into the character of Austrian economics. This work also collects the recent work of the leading authorities in this area, and will be an indispensible tool for all those interested in the implications of Austrian approach on economics. The author also examines *the market economy *theories of Competition and Entrepreneurship *the Mises-Hayek legacy.

Isaak Ilyich Rubin (1886-1937) was a Soviet economist who participated in the Russian Revolution and was a researcher at the Marx-Engels Institute Though his ideas were suppressed by the Soviet Union and he was eventually killed after being accused of Trotskyism, his ideas have since been rehabilitated within modern Marxism. Essays on Marx's Theory of Value (1924) emphasizes the importance of Marx's theory of commodity fetishism within the labor theory of value. It also argues that Marx's mature economic work represented the culmination of his lifetime project to understand how human creative power is shaped by social structures. He also discusses commodity production as a mere theoretical abstraction that only explains one aspect of a developed capitalist economy. The concept of value, as understood by Rubin, cannot exist without the other elements of a full-blown capitalist economy: money, capital, the existence of a proletariat, and so on. This Radical Reprint by Pattern Books is made to be accessible and as close to only manufacturing cost as possible.

Following the October Revolution of 1917, a revolutionary wave swept across Europe. In this period, Leon Trotsky, along with Lenin, was pivotal in setting up the Third (Communist) International, which represented a world party of the working class. The International could not be conjured out of thin air. Much like the Bolshevik Party, it had to be built through struggle against many different tendencies and ideas. This book collects all of Trotsky's writings and speeches related to the first five years of the Communist International. Highlighting the task he and Lenin faced in trying to educate the young communist parties of Germany, France and elsewhere, it deals with many problems that the working-class movement still comes up against today. This includes the question of the United Front, the national question, the consciousness of the working class and how it changes and much more. Today, the capitalist system faces the deepest crisis in its history. However, we are faced with the same problem Trotsky outlined in 1924: there is no mass international organisation of the working class with a clear understanding of the task at hand. Therefore, this work is not just of historical interest, but should be read as a guide to action for all workers and youth seeking a revolutionary way out of the present crisis. This edition contains a new introduction by Fred Weston, editor of Marxist.com, which outlines some of the key debates and decisions as well as an outline of the development of the International in this period.