Helen Plum Library

Draws on hundreds of hours of interviews and in-depth research to relate the complete story of the nation's financial meltdown, from the trading floors of lower Manhattan to the power corridors inside the Beltway

"This book examines the struggle between President Obama and the United States Congress to manage federal spending and tax policy for the three and one half years between 2009 and the summer of 2012. More than half the book focuses on the intense 44-day crisis in June and July 2011 when the United States came to the brink of a potentially catastrophic default on its debt."--Note to readers

A business leader, economic expert and active philanthropist provides an outline for solving some of today's urgent problems, explaining how he would make Social Security solvent, reduce inequality, improve healthcare and education and enhance government revenue. --Publisher's description

"A book by Marco Rubio about what America needs to change in order to have a prosperous future"--

"Senator Elizabeth Warren has long been an outspoken champion of America's middle class, and by the time the people of Massachusetts elected her in 2012, she had become one of the country's leading progressive voices. Now, at a perilous moment for our nation, she has written a book that is at once an illuminating account of how we built the strongest middle class in history, a scathing indictment of those who have spent the past thirty-five years...

"A progressive takedown of the uber-capitalist status quo that has enriched millionaires and billionaires at the expense of the working class, and a blueprint for what transformational change would actually look like. It's OK to be angry about capitalism. Reflecting on our turbulent times, Senator Bernie Sanders takes on the billionaire class and speaks blunt truths about our country's failure to address the destructive nature of a system that is...

In the early 20th century, business elites, trade associations, wealthy powerbrokers, and media allies set out to build a new American orthodoxy: down with "big government" and up with unfettered markets. With startling archival evidence, Oreskes and Conway document campaigns to rewrite textbooks, combat unions, and defend child labor. They detail the ploys that turned hardline economists Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman into household names;...

"The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of Evicted reimagines the debate on poverty, making a new and bracing argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it. The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and...

"Originally published in 1776, Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations was lauded by America's founders as a landmark work of Enlightenment thinking about national wealth, statecraft, and moral virtue. Today, Smith is one of the most influential icons of economic thought in America. Glory Liu traces how generations of Americans have read, reinterpreted, and weaponized Smith's ideas, revealing how his popular image as a champion of American-style capitalism...

"Economist Mark Paul considers the history of American rights and freedoms as determinants of American economic well-being. The failed promise of FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society programs to secure positive rights for all Americans (the right to a decent education, a good job, adequate health care, and a greater capacity for economic flourishing) have left the country fractured by inequality and stifled in social mobility. Paul traces this shift...