Class Politics

In The Great Divide, Joseph E. Stiglitz expands on the diagnosis he offered in his best-selling book The Price of Inequality and suggests ways to counter America's growing problem. With his signature blend of clarity and passion, Stiglitz argues that inequality is a choice - the cumulative result of unjust policies and misguided priorities.

It is an irony of our age that a man who rarely reads has unleashed an onslaught of books about his tenure and his time. Dissections of the white working class. Manifestos of political resistance. Works on identity, gender, and migration. Memoirs on race and protest. Revelations of White House mayhem. Warnings over the future of conservatism, progressivism, and of American democracy itself.

Guilty Admissions weaves together the story of an unscrupulous college counselor named Rick Singer, and how he preyed on the desperation of some of the country's wealthiest families living in a world defined by fierce competition, who function under constant pressure to get into the "right" schools, starting with preschool; nonstop fundraising and donation demands in the form of multi-million-dollar galas and private parties; and a community of deeply insecure parents who will do anything to get their kids into name-brand colleges in order to maintain their own A-list status.

The Voucher Promise examines the Housing Choice Voucher Program, colloquially known as "Section 8", and how it shapes the lives of families living in a Baltimore neighborhood called Park Heights. Eva Rosen tells stories about the daily lives of homeowners, voucher holders, renters who receive no housing assistance, and the landlords who provide housing.

In the spirit of Evicted, Bait and Switch, and The Big Short, a shocking, heart-wrenching investigation into America’s housing crisis and the modern-day robber barons who are making a fortune off the backs of the disenfranchised working and middle class - among them, Donald Trump and his inner circle.

When Bloomberg News invited the young American journalist Alex Cuadros to report on Brazil's emerging class of billionaires at the height of the historic Brazilian boom, he was poised to cover two of the biggest business stories of our time: how the giants of the developing world were triumphantly taking their place at the center of global capitalism and how wealth inequality was changing societies everywhere.

Since the financial crash of 2008, the cooperative movement has been coming back with renewed vigor. Everything for Everyone chronicles this economic and social revolution. Cooperative enterprise is poised to help us reclaim faith in our capacity for creative, powerful democracy.

Conventional political wisdom views the two most consequential presidents of the 20th century - FDR and Ronald Reagan - as ideological opposites. FDR is hailed as the champion of big-government progressivism manifested in the New Deal. Reagan is seen as the crusader for conservatism dedicated to small government and free markets. But Henry Olsen argues that this assumption is wrong.

Descended from families that created the United States, WASPs felt themselves stunted by a civilization that thwarted their higher aspirations at every turn. They were the original lost generation. Yet out of the neurotic ruins emerged a group of patriots devoted to public service and the renewal of society. In a study of the WASP revolution in American life, Michael Knox Beran brings the stories of Henry Adams and Henry Stimson, Learned Hand and Vida Scudder, John Jay Chapman and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney to life.

Understanding wealth in the United States - who has it, how they acquired it, and how they preserve it - is crucial to addressing the economic and political challenges facing the nation. But until now we have had little reliable information. Edward Wolff, one of the world's great experts on the economics of wealth, offers an authoritative account of patterns in the accumulation and distribution of wealth since 1900. A Century of Wealth in America demonstrates that the most remarkable change has been the growth of per capita household wealth.

Die Party ist vorbei. Der Crash ist da. Aus der Bankenkrise 2008 wurde über Nacht eine Krise der Weltwirtschaft. Da ist guter Rat teuer, und man beginnt sich an die Spekulationsblasen und Krisen der Vergangenheit zu erinnern. Kapitalismuskritik ist wieder in Mode, bleibt aber meist an der Oberfläche. Doch wie keinem anderen Ökonomen ist es vor 150 Jahren Karl Marx gelungen, die aberwitzigen Bewegungen des Kapitals und seinen Hang zur Selbstzerstörung zu beleuchten.

Bustle editor Samantha Leach and her childhood best friend, Elissa, met as infants in the suburbs of Providence, Rhode Island, where they attended nursery, elementary school, and temple together. As seventh graders, they would steal drinks from bar mitzvahs and have boys over in Samantha’s basement—innocent, early acts of rebellion. But after one of their shared acts, Samantha was given a disciplinary warning by their private school while Elissa was dismissed altogether, and later sent away.

Kelly argues instead for the democratization of ownership, including public ownership of vital services, worker-owned businesses, and more. She sketches the outlines of a nonextractive capitalism that would be subordinate to the public interest. This is an ambitious reimagining of the very foundations of our economy and society.

We all worry about what others think of us. We all long to succeed and fear failure. We all suffer, to a greater or lesser degree, usually privately and with embarrassment, from status anxiety. For the first time, Alain de Botton gives a name to this universal condition and sets out to investigate both its origins and possible solutions. He looks at history, philosophy, economics, art, and politics, and reveals the many ingenious ways that great minds have overcome their worries.

Thirty years ago, “greed is good” and “maximizing shareholder value” became the new mantras woven into the fabric of our business culture, economy, and politics. Although, around the world, free-market capitalism has lifted more than a billion people from poverty, in the US, most of the benefits of economic growth have been captured by the richest 10 percent, along with providing justification for squeezing workers, cheating customers, avoiding taxes, and leaving communities in the lurch. As a result, Americans are losing faith that a free-market economy is the best system.

Why won't he stay in his seat? Why does she flap her hands? And what should I do? As inclusion becomes the norm in general education, teachers are faced with behaviors they have never seen before. Special needs educators may recognize the telltale symptom of a sensory need or a textbook-case of an avoidance behavior, but this is all new territory for the general crowd!

The Suez Crisis of 1956 was Britain's 20th-century nadir, the moment when the once superpower was bullied into retreat. In the immortal words of former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson, 'Britain has lost an empire and not yet found a role.' But the funny thing was, Britain had already found a role. It even had the costume. The leaders of the world just hadn't noticed it yet. Butler to the World reveals how the UK took up its position at the elbow of the worst people on Earth: the oligarchs, kleptocrats and gangsters.

Thirty years ago, almost nobody talked about the white working class: in the House of Commons and the House of Lords the term had been used just three times in the previous two decades. Brexit helped to turn the group into a towering social and political force. But, in the aftermath, one-third of the population has been reduced to a cartoon. Veteran Economist journalist Joel Budd has spent years travelling around Britain, from Teesside to the Isle of Wight, south Wales to Lincolnshire. In Underdogs he offers a sharp corrective to the familiar stereotype of the white working class.

The tumultuous Flint sit-down strike of 1936-1937 was the birth of the United Auto Workers, which set the standard for wages in every industry. Midnight in Vehicle City tells the gripping story of how workers defeated General Motors, the largest industrial corporation in the world. Their victory ushered in the golden age of the American middle class and created a new kind of America, one in which every worker had a right to a share of the company’s wealth.

Branko Milanovic presents a bold new account of the dynamics that drive inequality on a global scale. Drawing on vast data sets and cutting-edge research, he explains the benign and malign forces that make inequality rise and fall within and among nations. He also reveals who has been helped the most by globalization, who has been held back, and what policies might tilt the balance toward economic justice.