eBook Categories Economics Ruling America: A History of Wealth and Power in a Democracy
Ruling America: A History of Wealth and Power in a Democracy |
| Ebook - Economics | |
| Saturday, 29 November 2008 | |
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In a series of thought-provoking essays, leading scholars of American history examine every epoch in which ruling economic elites have shaped our national experience. They explore how elites came into existence, how they established their dominance over public affairs, and how their rule came to an end. The contributors analyze the elite coalition that led the Revolution and then examine the antebellum planters of the South and the merchant patricians of the North. Later chapters vividly portray the Gilded Age "robber barons," the great finance capitalists in the age of J. P. Morgan, and the foreign-policy "Establishment" of the post-World War II years. The book concludes with a dissection of the corporate-led counter-revolution against the New Deal characteristic of the Reagan and Bush era. Rarely in the last half-century has one book afforded such a comprehensive look at the ways elite wealth and power have influenced the American experiment with democracy. At a time when the distribution of wealth and power has never been more unequal, Ruling America is of urgent contemporary relevance. This is a powerful set of essays on a sorely neglected subject: the history of the American elite in a world it has come to dominate. U.S. society has become less egalitarian in recent years, and
About the Author Read an Excerpt: Ruling America: A History of Wealth and Power in a Democracy PDF format, 207KB, 30Pages. Paperback: 384 pages Contents Visit Ruling America: A History of Wealth and Power in a Democracy HUP Website Contributors Steve Fraser is a writer and editor who lives in New York City. He is the author of Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life (2005) and Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor (1991), winner of the Philip Taft Prize. He is coeditor of The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930–1980 (1989). Gary Gerstle is Professor of History at the University of Maryland. He is the author of Working-Class Americanism (1989) and American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (2001), winner of the Theodore Saloutos Prize. He is co-editor of The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930–1980 (1989). Sven Beckert, Professor of History at Harvard University, is the author of The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoise (2001). He is currently writing a global history of cotton. Alan Dawley is Professor of History at The College of New Jersey. He is the author of Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn (1976), winner of the Bancroft Prize; Struggles for Justice: Social Responsibility and the Liberal State (1991); and Changing the World: American Progressives in War and Revolution (2003). Godfrey Hodgson is a British print, radio, and TV journalist and historian of the United States. His books include America in Our Time (1976); The Colonel: The Life and Wars of Henry Stimson, 1867–1950 (1990); More Equal Than Others: America from Nixon to the New Century (2004). He is currently at work on a biography of Woodrow Wilson’s key adviser, Colonel House. Gary J. Kornblith, Professor of History at Oberlin College, is the author of The Industrial Revolution in America (1996) and many essays on entrepreneurs, artisans, and political elites in antebellum America. Jackson Lears is Board of Governors Professor of History at Rutgers University and editor of Raritan: A Quarterly Review. He is the author of No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880–1920 (1981), nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award; Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (1994), winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award for History; and Something for Nothing: Luck in America (2003). Michael Lind, Whitehead Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., is the author of a number of books about American politics and history, including The Next American Nation (1995) and What Lincoln Believed (2004). John M. Murrin is Professor of History, emeritus, at Princeton University and one of the country’s leading scholars of colonial and revolutionary America. He has co-authored Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People (2004), and edited or co-edited five books. His own essays on early America range from politics and the law to economics and culture. David Nasaw is Distinguished Professor of History and Director of the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center. Author of four books, including The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst (2000), winner of the Bancroft Prize, the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, and three other prizes, he is currently working on a biography of Andrew Carnegie. Adam Rothman is Assistant Professor of History at Georgetown University. He is the author of Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South (2005). Bookmark
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Ruling America offers a panoramic history of our country's ruling elites from the time of the American Revolution to the present. At its heart is the greatest of American paradoxes: How have tiny minorities of the rich and privileged consistently exercised so much power in a nation built on the notion of rule by the people?
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