Americana takes us on a four-hundred-year journey of this spirit of innovation and ambition through a series of Next Big Things -- the inventions, techniques, and industries that drove American history forward: from the telegraph, the railroad, guns, radio, and banking to flight, suburbia, and sneakers, culminating with the Internet and mobile technology at the turn of the twenty-first century. The result is a thrilling alternative history of modern America that reframes events, trends, and people we thought we knew through the prism of the value that, for better or for worse, this nation holds dearest: capitalism.In a winning, accessible style, Bhu Srinivasan boldly takes on four centuries of American enterprise, revealing the unexpected connections that link them. We learn how Andrew Carnegie's early job as a telegraph messenger boy paved the way for his leadership of the steel empire that would make him one of the nation's richest men; how the gunmaker Remington reinvented itself in the postwar years to sell typewriters; how the inner workings of the Mafia mirrored the trend of consolidation and regulation in more traditional business; and how a 1950s infrastructure bill triggered a series of events that produced one of America's most enduring brands: KFC. Reliving the heady early days of Silicon Valley, we are reminded that the start-up is an idea as old as America itself.Entertaining, eye-opening, and sweeping in its reach, Americana is an exhilarating new work of narrative history.

    Writing in an accessible style, William J. Baumol, Robert E. Litan, and Carl J. Schramm documentfour different varieties of capitalism and identify the conditions that characterize Good Capitalism—the right blend of entrepreneurial and established firms, which can vary among countries—as well as the features of Bad Capitalism. They examine how countries catching up to the United States can move faster toward the economic frontier, while laying out the need for the United States itself to stick to and reinforce the recipe for growth that has enabled it to be the leading economic force in the world. This pathbreaking book is a must read for anyone who cares about global growth and how to ensure America’s economic future.

    Graphs are not included, but both the graphs and the concepts behind them are explained; only basic math is included, and you can even skim over the math and still come away with an understanding of the concepts; statistics is not included at all.BASIC ECONOMICS FOR STUDENTS AND NON-STUDENTS ALIKE is an easy way to learn concepts relating to economics and the economy. It is a product of thousands of hours spent online, teaching basic concepts in economics to hundreds of students worldwide over the course of the past several years. From back and forth communications, I have discovered the explanations for the concepts that students find easiest to understand, as well as the areas that most often get misunderstood and under-emphasized.I have worked with students located throughout the United States and from many different countries, on six different continents; students from many different school systems with different points of emphasis; students with different levels of knowledge, different backgrounds, and different levels of interest in the subject. I have received numerous comments and testimonials regarding the teaching methods that I incorporate in BASIC ECONOMICS FOR STUDENTS AND NON-STUDENTS ALIKE.The subject matter included in BASIC ECONOMICS FOR STUDENTS AND NON-STUDENTS ALIKE comes from a compilation of many different textbooks at the introductory and intermediate levels. My goal was to include every subject in economics that normally will be found in an introductory level textbook of economics, microeconomics, or macroeconomics. Since different school systems, different classroom instructors, and different textbooks cover a slightly different combination of topics, BASIC ECONOMICS FOR STUDENTS AND NON-STUDENTS ALIKE is a little more comprehensive than most single introductory textbooks of economics. Some of the topics will be found in introductory classes in some schools, but in intermediate-level classes in other schools.

    You don't need a fistful of statistics to know this. Visit any city, and evidence of our shattered social compact will present itself. From Appalachia to the Rust Belt and down to rural Texas, the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest stretches to unimaginable chasms. Whether the cause of this inequality is systemic injustice, the entrenchment of racism in our culture, the long war on drugs, or immigration policies, it endangers not only the American Dream but our very lives.In Tales of Two Americas, some of the literary world's most exciting writers look beyond numbers and wages to convey what it feels like to live in this divided nation. Their extraordinarily powerful stories, essays, and poems demonstrate how boundaries break down when experiences are shared, and that in sharing our stories we can help to alleviate a suffering that touches so many people.

    Louis journalist Sarah Kendzior tackles issues including labor exploitation, racism, gentrification, media bias and other aspects of the post-employment economy. Sample titles: "The Peril of Hipster Economics", "The Wrong Kind of Caucasian", "Survival is Not an Aspiration". "Mothers Are Not 'Opting Out' -- They Are Out of Options", "Academia's Indentured Servants", "Meritocracy for Sale", "The Immorality of College Admissions", "Expensive Cities Are Killing Creativity". A former columnist for Al Jazeera English, Kendzior has spent years chronicling an America of diminishing opportunities. This collection contains the best of her work.

    Award-winning broadcaster Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornel West, one of the nation’s leading democratic intellectuals, co-hosts of Public Radio’s Smiley & West , now take on the “P” word—poverty.The Rich and the Rest of Us is the next step in the journey that began with “The Poverty Tour: A Call to Conscience.” Smiley and West’s 18-city bus tour gave voice to the plight of impoverished Americans of all races, colors, and creeds. With 150 million Americans persistently poor or near poor, the highest numbers in over five decades, Smiley and West argue that now is the time to confront the underlying conditions of systemic poverty in America before it’s too late.By placing the eradication of poverty in the context of the nation’s greatest moments of social transformation— such as the abolition of slavery, woman’s suffrage, and the labor and civil rights movements—ending poverty is sure to emerge as America’s 21st -century civil rights struggle.As the middle class disappears and the safety net is shredded, Smiley and West, building on the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., ask us to confront our fear and complacency with 12 poverty changing ideas. They challenge us to re-examine our assumptions about poverty in America—what it really is and how to eliminate it now.

    health care, patients and doctors are losing. Who Killed Health Care? shows how to win the war. One of the nation's most respected health care analysts, Regina Herzlinger exposes the motives and methods of those who have crippled America's health care system-figures in the insurance, hospital, employment, governmental, and academic sectors. She proves how our current system, which is organized around payers and providers rather than the needs of its users, is dangerously eroding patient welfare and is pushing costs out of the reach of millions.Who Killed Health Care? then outlines Herzlinger's bold new plan for a consumer-driven system that will deliver affordable, high-quality care to everyone. By putting insurance money in the hands of patients, removing the middleman in the doctor-patient relationship, and giving employers cost relief, consumers and physicians will be empowered to make the system work the way it should. Herzlinger describes in precise detail how her innovative program will provideSmaller, disease-focused medical facilities that provide complete care for patientsA national system of medical records that provides privacy with confidential access by approved practitionersMandatory performance evaluations of all hospitals and all other medical organizationsMandatory health insurance with subsidies for those who cannot afford itWho Killed Health Care? is a call to arms that must be answered; the welfare of every American hangs in the balance."A brilliant analysis... A must-read." - Bill George, Professor, Harvard Business School and Former CEO of Medtronic"As it becomes more and more obvious to everyone that our current health care system is unsustainable, this is the book that had to be written." - Daniel H. Johnson, Jr. MD, former president of the American Medical Association"Regina Herzlinger's ideas to tackle the crisis of the U.S. health care system are based on keen knowledge of the system's existing difficulties along with insights that introduce the reader to new streamlined choices that have the potential of getting both quantity and cost under control." - Joseph Kennedy, founder, chairman, and president, Citizens Energy Corporation, CEO, Citizens Health Care, former representative (D-Mass)"Regina Herzlinger... offers a vision of the way things can be, should be, and will be sooner or later. The only question is: how long do we have to wait?" - Greg Scandlen, founder, Consumers for Health Choices "Regi Herzlinger has brilliantly articulated a better way - embracing the principles of competition and innovation that cause every other sector of our economy to thrive. Discharging American health care from the ICU can only happen by putting individual Americans - not politicians and bureaucrats - back in charge of their health care decisioins." - U.S. Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla), M.D. "Following on the heels of her landmark Market-Driven Health Care, Herzlinger lays it on the line with her expose of what many who work in the health care industry have felt in their gut. Now it is articulated in an entertaining and must-read portrayal, with you and me as the only way out." - Dennis White, executive vice president for strategic development, National Business Coalition on Health "A wonderful Orwellian romp through issues which carry a deadly irony. The killers of health care are, of course, the third parties, each of which has an itchy palm and a commitment to profit or power which exceeds the commitment to service, with each engaging the others within a politically shaped box. Rarely has the case for the public been made with so much force, foresight, and wit, and a better way forward shown so clearly." - James F. Fries, MD, Professor of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine "You can practically hear the war chants as Professor Herzlinger sets out her view of what's wrong with the health care system and how to fix it. You'd best read it so you can decide which side you will be on when the battle is joined." - Paul Levy, CEO, Beth Israel Hospital, Boston, MA "Regina Herzlinger, the nation's leading expert on consumer-driven health care, has given us a brilliant analysis of the flaws in our health care system and what it will take to get it back on track. Her latest book is a must-read." - Bill George, Professor of Management Practice, Harvard Business School, Former CEO, Medtronic, and author of Authentic Leadership "You don't have to agree with her diagnosis and prescription for the U.S. health care system, but you do have to read her book. Once again, Professor Herzlinger has put together a well researched, well written, and very provocative blueprint for the future of health care." Peter L. Slavin, MD, President, Massachusetts General Hospital

    This iconic resort is now located in what once was thousands of acres of swamp and marshland. Through spy-like moves and innovative strategies, Walt Disney and his cadre of creative leaders turned this massive swamp land into today's Disney World. This books shares the amazing behind the scenes story of how Disney's Florida resort, code-named Project Future, rose from the marshes of Central Florida to become one of the world's most popular theme park resorts.

    As she gets to know people who strongly oppose many of the ideas she famously champions, Russell Hochschild nevertheless finds common ground and quickly warms to the people she meets – among them a Tea Party activist whose town has been swallowed by a sinkhole caused by a drilling accident – people whose concerns are actually ones that all Americans share: the desire for community, the embrace of family, and hopes for their children. Strangers in Their Own Land goes beyond the commonplace liberal idea that these are people who have been duped into voting against their own interests. Instead, Russell Hochschild finds lives ripped apart by stagnant wages, a loss of home, an elusive American dream – and political choices and views that make sense in the context of their lives. Russell Hochschild draws on her expert knowledge of the sociology of emotion to help us understand what it feels like to live in "red" America. Along the way she finds answers to one of the crucial questions of contemporary American politics: why do the people who would seem to benefit most from "liberal" government intervention abhor the very idea?

    With the same breath, they implore us to leave the job of understanding the magical powers of the market to the “experts."Despite the efforts of these mainstream commentators to convince us otherwise, many of us have begun to question why this system has produced such vast inequality and wanton disregard for its own environmental destruction. This book offers answers to exactly these questions on their own terms: in the form of a radical economic theory.

    With all our media now traveling a single network, an unprecedented potential is building for centralized control over what Americans see and hear. Could history repeat itself with the next industrial consolidation? Could the Internet—the entire flow of American information—come to be ruled by one corporate leviathan in possession of “the master switch”? That is the big question of Tim Wu’s pathbreaking book.As Wu’s sweeping history shows, each of the new media of the twentieth century—radio, telephone, television, and film—was born free and open. Each invited unrestricted use and enterprising experiment until some would-be mogul battled his way to total domination. Here are stories of an uncommon will to power, the power over information: Adolph Zukor, who took a technology once used as commonly as YouTube is today and made it the exclusive prerogative of a kingdom called Hollywood . . . NBC’s founder, David Sarnoff, who, to save his broadcast empire from disruptive visionaries, bullied one inventor (of electronic television) into alcoholic despair and another (this one of FM radio, and his boyhood friend) into suicide . . . And foremost, Theodore Vail, founder of the Bell System, the greatest information empire of all time, and a capitalist whose faith in Soviet-style central planning set the course of every information industry thereafter.Explaining how invention begets industry and industry begets empire—a progress often blessed by government, typically with stifling consequences for free expression and technical innovation alike—Wu identifies a time-honored pattern in the maneuvers of today’s great information powers: Apple, Google, and an eerily resurgent AT&T. A battle royal looms for the Internet’s future, and with almost every aspect of our lives now dependent on that network, this is one war we dare not tune out.Part industrial exposé, part meditation on what freedom requires in the information age, The Master Switch is a stirring illumination of a drama that has played out over decades in the shadows of our national life and now culminates with terrifying implications for our future.

    Thompson’s Las Vegas, with the Good Doctor as tour guide. A Lord of the Rings-like adventure in the city’s underground flood channels. A seven-day stay at a seedy motel on East Fremont Street.The stories in My Week at the Blue Angel aren’t about Steve Wynn, Cirque du Soleil, or how to play poker and they aren’t set in Caesars Palace, XS Nightclub, or a 2,000-seat showroom. They’re about prostitutes, ex-cons, and the homeless and they’re set under Caesars Palace and in trailer parks and weekly motels.In this creative-nonfiction collection, Matthew O’Brien—author of Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas—and veteran photographer Bill Hughes show a side of the city rarely seen. A side beyond the neon lights, themed facades, and motel-room doors. A side beyond the barbwire fences, “No Trespassing” signs, and midnight shadows.A side of Las Vegas many locals and visitors are curious about, but few ever explore.

    prefer socialism to capitalism. But after being declared dead and buried for decades, socialism has come to mean little more than something vaguely less cruel and stupid than what we have now. That's not exactly going to inspire millions to storm the barricades. Danny Katch brings together the two great Marxist traditions of Karl and Groucho to provide an entertaining and insightful introduction to what the socialist tradition has to say about democracy, economics and the potential of human beings to be something more than being bomb-dropping, planet-destroying racist fools.

    Our shared values - equality and fairness, democracy and freedom, community and solidarity - can both provide the basis for a critique of capitalism, and help to guide us towards a socialist and democratic society.In this elegant book, Erik Olin Wright has distilled decades of work into a concise and tightly argued manifesto - analyzing the varieties of anti-capitalism, assessing different strategic approaches, and laying the foundations for a society dedicated to human flourishing. How to Be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century is an urgent and powerful argument for socialism, and a unparalleled guide to help us get there. Another world is possible.

    For all those who have read and cherished the Foxfire books, here is a loving portrait of a fondly remembered friend. This book is not just about Aunt Arie; it is Aunt Arie. In her own words, she discusses everything from planting, harvesting, and cooking to her thoughts about religion and her feelings about living alone. Also included are testimonials from many who knew her and a wealth of photographs.