From the legendary former Fed Chairman and the acclaimed Economist
writer and historian, the full, epic story of America's evolution from a
small patchwork of threadbare colonies to the most powerful engine of
wealth and innovation the world has ever seen.
Shortlisted for the 2018 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of
the Year Award
From even the start of his fabled career, Alan Greenspan was duly famous
for his deep understanding of even the most arcane corners of the
American economy, and his restless curiosity to know even more. To the
extent possible, he has made a science of understanding how the US
economy works almost as a living organism--how it grows and changes,
surges and stalls. He has made a particular study of the question of
productivity growth, at the heart of which is the riddle of innovation.
Where does innovation come from, and how does it spread through a
society? And why do some eras see the fruits of innovation spread more
democratically, and others, including our own, see the opposite?
In Capitalism in America, Greenspan distills a lifetime of grappling
with these questions into a thrilling and profound master reckoning with
the decisive drivers of the US economy over the course of its history.
In partnership with the celebrated Economist journalist and historian
Adrian Wooldridge, he unfolds a tale involving vast landscapes, titanic
figures, triumphant breakthroughs, enlightenment ideals as well as
terrible moral failings. Every crucial debate is here--from the role of
slavery in the antebellum Southern economy to the real impact of FDR's
New Deal to America's violent mood swings in its openness to global
trade and its impact. But to read Capitalism in America is above all
to be stirred deeply by the extraordinary productive energies unleashed
by millions of ordinary Americans that have driven this country to
unprecedented heights of power and prosperity.
At heart, the authors argue, America's genius has been its unique
tolerance for the effects of creative destruction, the ceaseless churn
of the old giving way to the new, driven by new people and new ideas.
Often messy and painful, creative destruction has also lifted almost all
Americans to standards of living unimaginable to even the wealthiest
citizens of the world a few generations past. A sense of justice and
human decency demands that those who bear the brunt of the pain of
change be protected, but America has always accepted more pain for more
gain, and its vaunted rise cannot otherwise be understood, or its
challenges faced, without recognizing this legacy. For now, in our time,
productivity growth has stalled again, stirring up the populist furies.
There's no better moment to apply the lessons of history to the most
pressing question we face, that of whether the United States will
preserve its preeminence, or see its leadership pass to other,
inevitably less democratic powers.
