"This book documents the decline of white-working class lives over the last half-century and examines the social and economic forces that have slowly made these lives more difficult. Case and Deaton argue that market and political power in the United States have moved away from labor towards capital-as unions have weakened and politics have become more favorable to business, corporations have become more powerful. Consolidation in some American industries,...

"The word 'neoliberal' is often used to condemn a broad swath of policies thought to valorize the use of illegitimate power abroad or prize free market principles over people. Yet, as Gerstle argues in this major new history, these negative uses fail to reckon with the full contours of what neoliberalism was and why its worldview exerted such persuasive hold on both the left and right for three decades. First articulated under Reagan, facilitated...

"A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian's provocative reinterpretation of the eight decades surrounding the Civil War (and leading into the twentieth century); the next volume in the Penguin History of the United States, edited by Eric Foner. In this ambitious story of American imperial conquest and capitalist development, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Steven Hahn takes on the conventional histories of the nineteenth century and offers a perspective...

"The progressive economics writer redefines the national conversation about American freedom"-- Health insurance, student loan debt, retirement savings, child care, work-life balance, access to home ownership-- these are the issues driving America's current political debates. Konczal believes they are all linked by a single question: should we allow the free market to determine our lives? His answer is a resounding "no". With chapters on the history...

"It seemed like no force in the world could slow J.P. Morgan's drive to power. In the summer of 1901, the financier was assembling his next mega-deal: Northern Securities, an enterprise that would affirm his dominance in America's most important industry: the railroads. Then, a bullet from an anarchist's gun put an end to the business-friendly presidency of William McKinley. A new chief executive bounded into office: Theodore Roosevelt. He was convinced...

"An acclaimed historian explodes the myth about the 'special relationship' between Americans and their guns, revealing that savvy 19th century businessmen--not gun lovers--created American gun culture"--

"In the past few years, it has become impossible (for most) to deny the effects of climate change and that the planet is warming, and to acknowledge that we must act. But a new kind of denialism is taking root in the halls of power, shaped by a quarter-century of neoliberal policies, that threatens to doom us before we've grasped the full extent of the crisis. As Kate Aronoff argues, since the 1980s and 1990s, economists, pro-business Democrats and...

"In Strange Rites, Tara Isabella Burton takes a tour through contemporary American religiosity. As traditional churches continue to sink into obsolescence, people are looking elsewhere for the intensity and unity that religion once provided. We're carrying on a longstanding American tradition of religious eclecticism, DIY-innovation and "unchurched" piety (and highly effective capitalism)"-- While rejecting traditional worship in unprecedented numbers,...