American Colossus
by H.W. Brands
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The years 1865 to 1900 embodied “the rise of American capitalism,” said Ezra Klein in Salon.com. So says historian H.W. Brands, who explains how “technological changes like the railroad and the telegraph made for a newly national economy” and created “a sudden ability to get much richer” than had ever been possible. Brands’ book is amazing in scope. He’s a fantastic storyteller about the era’s great figures, though his approach is “hampered by the sheer number of stories he tells.”
America’s Medicis
by Suzanne Loebl
(Harper, $35)
Few families have profited more from the U.S. economy than the Rockefellers, said Jonathan Lopez in The Wall Street Journal. But they’ve also given back. According to arts writer Suzanne Loebl, comparison to the patronage practiced by Florence’s first family is apt. In founding such institutions as the Museum of Modern Art and Colonial Williamsburg, Loebl says, the Rockefellers have always been guided by the idea “that a moral responsibility comes with the possession of great wealth.”
All the Devils Are Here
by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera
(Penguin, $33)
“Two of our finest business journalists” have written “as legible an overview as exists” on the origins and effects of the 2008 financial crisis, said Paul M. Barrett in The New York Times. Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera’s plainspoken account “provides a service even for those who have tried to keep up with the literature of the crisis.” The authors “are particularly strong in their examination of the American myth that every family deserves to own a home.”
Griftopia
by Matt Taibbi
(Spiegel and Grau, $26)
Matt Taibbi’s new book stems from an eye-catching 2009 Rolling Stone piece on Goldman Sachs in which he described the investment bank as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity,” said Chris Grygiel in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Broadening his assault, Taibbi argues persuasively that the recent financial crisis exposed “two Americas”: one for “the grifter class”—i.e., investment bankers—and “one for everyone else.” Both political parties take some blame.
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