Ocean State Libraries

This famous study - one of the most influential in the area of American economic history - brought a halt to Americans' uncritical reverence for their country's revolutionary past. Questioning the Founding Fathers' motivations in drafting the Constitution, it viewed the results as a product of economic self-interest. Perhaps the most controversial books of its time.

In its hubris, the financial sector has hijacked the American economy and put our very global future at risk. “Bad money” refers not just to the depreciated dollar but to the dangerous attitudes and flawed products of wayward megafinance. Also “bad” are the risk miscalculations and strategic abuses of new multitrillion-dollar products and vehicles like CDOs and SIVs. Phillips lashes out at the “bad money” practices...

It’s not an exaggeration to say that middle-class Americans are an endangered species and that the American Dream of a secure, comfortable standard of living has become as outdated as an Edsel with an eight-track player.  That the United States of America is in danger of becoming a third world nation.
 
The evidence is all around us:
 
Our industrial base is vanishing, taking with it the kind of jobs that have formed...

Attaining the standard of living our parents managed has become impossible. Quart examines the lives of many middle-class Americans who can now barely afford to raise children, and shows how our country has failed its families. She offers real solutions to problems, including outlining necessary policy shifts, as well as detailing the DIY tactics some families are already putting into motion, and argues for the cultural reevaluation of parenthood...

A survey of major changes in American life and ideas during the first half of the twentieth century, focusing on economic expansion and its influence on the American standard of living, thinking, and citizenship.

"The U.S. senator and former presidential candidate offers a progressive takedown of the uber-capitalist status quo that has enriched millionaires and billionaires at the expense of the working class, and presents a blueprint for what transformational change would actually look like."--