"The inside story of how our political class enabled an era of unaccountable corporate might that left ordinary Americans isolated and powerless-and how we can fight back-from the acclaimed author of The Unbroken Thread. Over the past two generations, U.S. leaders deregulated big business on the faith that it would yield a better economy and a freer society. But the opposite happened. Americans lost stable, well-paying jobs, Wall Street dominated...

"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...

"From Truman to Trump, the deep corruption of our political leaders unveiled. Many critiques of the Trump era contrast it with the latter half of the twentieth century, when the United States seemed governed more by statesmen than by special interests. Without denying the extraordinary vigor of President Trump's assault on traditional ethical and legal norms, Jonathan Marshall challenges the myth of a golden age of American democracy. Drawing on a...

"In a major reassessment of modern conservatism, noted historian Kathryn S. Olmsted reexamines the explosive labor disputes in the agricultural fields of Depression-era California, the cauldron that inspired a generation of artists and writers and that triggered the intervention of FDR's New Deal. Right Out of California tells how this brief moment of upheaval terrified business leaders into rethinking their relationship to American politics--a narrative...

"Although 'grassroots' conjures up images of independent citizen organizing, much mass participation today is sponsored by elite consultants working for corporations and powerful interest groups. This book pulls back the curtain to reveal a lucrative industry of consulting firms that incentivize public activism as a marketable service. Edward Walker illustrates how, spurred by the post-sixties advocacy explosion and rising business political engagement,...

"Historians typically regard the British Empire as a state project aided by corporations. Philip Stern turns this view on its head, arguing that corporations drove colonial expansion and governance, creating an overlap between sovereign and commercial power that continues to shape the relationship between nations and corporations to this day"--