"Argues that America's might lies in its middle class and calls for a focused directive to reinvigorate the class in order to return the nation to greatness." -- "Award-winning author Peter D. Kiernan focuses on America's greatest challenge--and opportunity--restoring the middle class to its full promise and potential. Our educated, skilled, and motivated middle class was the cornerstone of America's postwar economic might, but the country's dynamic...

"A unique and riveting exploration of one of America's largest and fastest-growing industries--the business of poverty"--Provided by publisher.

"The bestselling author of Bowling Alone offers [an] ... examination of the American Dream in crisis--how and why opportunities for upward mobility are diminishing, jeopardizing the prospects of an ever larger segment of Americans"-- "What has happened to the Land of Opportunity? The promise of the American Dream is that anyone, regardless of his or her origins, can have a fair start in life. If we work hard, we can get a good education and achieve...

By the American Revolution, the farmers and city-dwellers of British America had achieved, individually and collectively, considerable prosperity. The nature and extent of that success are still unfolding. In this first comprehensive assessment of where research on prerevolutionary economy stands, what it seeks to achieve, and how it might best proceed, the authors discuss those areas in which traditional work remains to be done and address new possibilities...

In 2004, Carl Schramm, president of the Kauffman Foundation, the world's leading foundation for entrepreneurship, published a groundbreaking essay with a radical premise: that Americans literally have no conception of the secret that truly underlies our economic success, and that for the United States to survive and continue to lead the world's economy, it is imperative we learn to understand and employ that secret. The secret that has led the American...

This classic study of antebellum Southern society demonstrates how slavery was the bedrock of the region's social order and cultural identity. In The Political Economy of Slavery, Eugene Genovese argues that slavery gave the South a distinct class structure, political community, economy, ideology, and a set of psychological patterns. As a result, the South grew away from the rest of the nation and became increasingly unstable during the nineteenth...

"Every day, innovative entrepreneurs pioneer bold economic ideas that change the way we live and work. Companies like Google, Apple, Oracle, Facebook and Twitter aren't the only ones shaping our economic future--there's another trend emerging that will change the ways we work and live. The "sharing economy," or the "collaborative consumption economy," includes companies like TaskRabbit, Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, Zaarly, and DocVacay who are purveyors of...

In these real-life stories, Rick Bragg evokes the hardscrabble lives of those who lived and died by an American cotton mill.

The long-running "Ask a North Korean" column produced by NK News in Washington D.C. invites readers to ask questions of recent North Korean defectors about everyday issues that are not generally discussed in the media. Various aspects of life in North Korea are discussed in this book through a series of interviews . These interviews show that even in the world's most authoritarian regime, there is still a degree of normality and continuity. --

Steven Stoll offers a fresh, provocative account of Appalachia, from the earliest European settlers, through crucial episodes such as the Whiskey Rebellion and the founding of West Virginia, and the arrival of timber and coal companies that set off a devastating "scramble for Appalachia."--