"The stagnation of living standards for most Americans over the past few decades has been the defining trend of modern life in the United States. Wealth and educational attainment have all slowed to a crawl in the twenty first century, while life expectancy has declined, economic inequality has soared, and the Black-White wage gap is as large as it was when Harry Truman was president. How did this happen in the world's most powerful country? Drawing...

Celebrated economic policy maker and political theorist Robert B. Reich argues that the nation's 2008 economic collapse is the result of an increasing concentration of income and wealth at the top--and a middle class that had to go deeply into debt to maintain a decent standard of living. To ensure that prosperity is widely shared, he continues, requires the implementation of a much broader safety net for the middle class financed by higher marginal...

"Squeezed" weaves together intimate reporting with sharp and lively critique to show how the high cost of parenthood and our increasingly unstable job market have imploded the middle-class American Dream for many families, and offers surprising solutions for how we might change things. Families today are squeezed on every side--from high childcare costs and harsh employment policies to workplaces without paid family leave or even dependable and regular...

A portrait of poverty-level working families from a range of ethnic backgrounds in America reveals their legacy of low-paying, dead-end jobs, dysfunctional parenting, and substance abuse.

"The story of regional inequality in America as revealed by the rise of Amazon and its distribution network"-- MacGillis shows that Amazon's sprawling network of delivery hubs, data centers, and corporate campuses epitomizes a land where winner and loser cities and regions are drifting steadily apart, the civic fabric is unraveling, and work has become increasingly rudimentary and isolated. Ranging across the country, he tells the stories of those...

Presents an analysis of the economic crisis of 2009, citing such factors as expanded home ownership and risky derivative elections in the face of increasing shareholder demands and discussing the role of responsible parties in the government, financial, and private sectors.

"In this new, revised and enlarged edition, Discrimination and Disparities goes beyond its analysis--in the first edition--of the sources of disparities and the different kinds of discrimination. It deals with undeniable fact of gross disparities in opportunity, without succumbing to the 'social justice' vision of our time--a vision with demonstrably false assumptions, and solutions that may not even be possible, in any comprehensive and sustainable...

Foreign policy expert and key impeachment witness Fiona Hill reveals how declining opportunity has set America on the grim path of modern Russia--and shows how we can return hope to our forgotten places. In this deeply personal account, she shares what she has learned, and explains that only by expanding opportunity can we save our democracy.