"Wealth Against Commonwealth" by Henry Demarest Lloyd is a critical examination of the relationship between wealth and democracy. In this influential work, Lloyd argues that the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few undermines the principles of equality and justice that are foundational to a democratic society. He explores the impact of monopolies and corporate power on the economy and the political system, emphasizing the need for reform to ensure that wealth serves the common goo...

Nature is rich; but everywhere man, the heir of nature, is poor. Never in this happy country or elsewhere—except in the Land of Miracle, where "they did all eat and were filled"—has there been enough of anything for the people. Never since time began have all the sons and daughters of men been all warm, and all filled, and all shod and roofed. Never yet have all the virgins, wise or foolish, been able to fill their lamps with oil. The world, enriched by thousands of generations of toilers ...

A "stimulating" account of the capitalists who changed America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, setting the stage for the 1929 crash and Great Depression ( Kirkus Reviews).In the decades following the Civil War, America entered an era of unprecedented corporate expansion, with ultimate financial power in the hands of a few wealthy industrialists who exploited the system for everything it was worth. The Rockefellers, Fords, Morgans, and Vanderbilts...

THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING CLASSIC OF POLITICAL INTEGRITYWith a foreword by Robert F. Kennedy and introduction by Caroline KennedyJohn F. Kennedy’s enduring classic resounds with timeless lessons on leadership and the most cherished of virtues—courage and patriotism—and remains a moving, powerful, and relevant testament to the indomitable American spirit.During 1954-55, Kennedy, then a junior senator from the state of Massachusetts, profiled eight American patriots,...

"Superb . . . the best one-volume economic history of the United States in a long time and, perhaps, ever." — NewsweekIn this illuminating history, John Steele Gordon tells the extraordinary story of the world's first economic superpower. He shows how the American economy became not only the world's largest, but also its most dynamic and innovative. Combining its English political inheritance with its diverse, ambitious population, the nation was able to de...

From the two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, bestselling historian, and author of Our First Civil War: a "first-rate" narrative history (The New York Times)that brilliantly portrays the emergence, in a remarkably short time, of a recognizably modern America.American Colossus captures the decades between the Civil War and the turn of the twentieth century, when a few breathtakingly wealthy businessmen transformed the United States from an ag...

The noted private fortunes of settlement and colonial times were derived from the ownership of land and the gains of trading. Usually both had a combined influence and were frequently attended by agriculture. Throughout the colonies were scattered lords of the soil who held vast territorial domains over which they exercised an arbitrary and, in some portions of the colonies, a feudal sway.Nearly all the colonies were settled by chartered companies, organized for purely commercial p...

One of the busiest corners of the globe at the opening of the year 1872 was a strip of Northwestern Pennsylvania, not over fifty miles long, known the world over as the Oil Regions. Twelve years before this strip of land had been but little better than a wilderness; its chief inhabitants the lumbermen, who every season cut great swaths of primeval pine and hemlock from its hills, and in the spring floated them down the Allegheny River to Pittsburg. The great tides of Western emigration had...

The story of America is a story of dreamers and defaulters. It is also a story of dramatic financial panics that defined the nation, created its political parties, and forced tens of thousands to escape their creditors to new towns in Texas, Florida, and California. As far back as 1792, these panics boiled down to one simple question: Would Americans pay their debts—or were we just a nation of deadbeats?From the merchant William Duer’s attempts to speculate on post–Revolutionary Wa...

America Afire is the powerful story of the election of 1800, arguably the most important election in America's history and certainly one of the most hotly disputed. Former allies Adams and Jefferson, president versus vice president, Federalist versus Republican, squared off in a vicious contest that resulted in broken friendships, scandals, riots, slander, and jailings in the fourth presidential election under the Constitution.

According to Wikipedia: "Theodore Roosevelt (October 27, 1858 January 6, 1919), also known as T.R., and to the public (but never to friends and intimates) as Teddy, was the 26th President of the United States. A leader of the Republican Party and of the Progressive Party, he was a Governor of New York and a professional historian, naturalist, explorer, hunter, author, and soldier. He is most famous for his personality: his energy, his vast range of interests and achievements, his model of ...

"The best, the liveliest and most illuminating" account of Rockefeller, Morgan, and the other men who seized American economic power after the Civil War ( The New Republic).John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, E. H. Harriman, Jay Gould, Henry Clay Frick . . . their names carry a powerful historical ring, still echoing today in the countless institutions that are part of their legacy, from universities to museums to bank...