Steve Fraser

Ponderous and bombastic, but filled with detailed history. I learned move about the first 'Gilded Age' than I thought possible from this book. I appreciated his appreciation of Henry George, but found his one sentence dismissal of George's solution to the problems of progress and poverty a bit, well, abrupt. That being said I was never able to really discern the authors solution at all - it was written before 2016 and seemed unable to get a grip on what was happening in the American political economy. Ah, hindsight. Nonetheless, worth a read through for the history alone.… (mais)

This is a very dense book, with lots of historical context packaged frequently in fun and creative language.
The point of the book is the comparison of the two gilded ages - the historical Gilded Age is the second part of the 19th century, leading into WWI and up to the 1929 Great Depression, marked by the US version of the industrial revolution, its dealing with labor, its oppression of women and men fighting for their rights, and it pacification of the poor through the New Deal, thus saving capitalism.
The second gilded age is the one we are living in right now, where the US is again leaving its people in poverty to enrich the few, using a political system that plays into the hands of the industry owners. Major differences to the first one are that today, poor people do not recognize the importance of labor organization, live on credit both to survive and to aspire, and new technologies help create a work and life of fear.
I found the book utterly depressing but also invigorating in its clarity to connect historical situations across the two centuries, showing the threads, the repetition, and not really a way for the US out of this.… (mais)

This title probably has a different feel depending on when and where you read it. The context of 2019 in DC made the parts about corruption and regulatory capture by the most powerful industries not the least bit surprising. Some of that resonated with "Cadillac Desert," even. Anyhow, the book is really about the cycle of a wealthy elite moving toward complete deregulation, the inevitable response in which their power is somewhat diminished, and then continuing on. Maybe we'll never get out of it, but I suppose Fraser's point is that the popular response needs to be sustained before it wanes again.… (mais)