20Th Century category: 9982 books
The Power of a Single Number
A Political History of GDP
Language: English
Release Date: April 26, 2016
Widely used since the mid-twentieth century, GDP (gross domestic product) has become the world's most powerful statistical indicator of national development and progress. Practically all governments adhere to the idea that GDP growth is a primary economic target, and while criticism of this measure...
by Alex Groner
Language: English
Release Date: April 2, 2016
Language: English
Release Date: April 2, 2016
American business people have built the most creative and productive economy in world history. Here is the story of the men and women who made America - from Pilgrim traders to pioneers of the Industrial Revolution and the great innovators of the early twentieth century.
The Battle of Bretton Woods
John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order
Language: English
Release Date: February 11, 2013
When turmoil strikes world monetary and financial markets, leaders invariably call for 'a new Bretton Woods' to prevent catastrophic economic disorder and defuse political conflict. The name of the remote New Hampshire town where representatives of forty-four nations gathered in July 1944, in the...
Collective Courage
A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice
Language: English
Release Date: May 2, 2014
In Collective Courage, Jessica Gordon Nembhard chronicles African American cooperative business ownership and its place in the movements for Black civil rights and economic equality. Not since W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1907 Economic Co-operation Among Negro Americans has there been a full-length, nationwide...
Power Failure
The Inside Story of The Collapse of Enron
Language: English
Release Date: March 25, 2003
*“They’re still trying to hide the weenie,” thought Sherron Watkins as she read a newspaper clipping about Enron two weeks before Christmas, 2001. . . It quoted [CFO] Jeff McMahon addressing the company’s creditors and cautioning them against a rash judgment. “Don’t assume that there is...
Breaking Rockefeller
The Incredible Story of the Ambitious Rivals Who Toppled an Oil Empire
Language: English
Release Date: May 24, 2016
The incredible tale of how ambitious oil rivals Marcus Samuel, Jr., and Henri Deterding joined forces to topple the Standard Oil empire
Marcus Samuel, Jr., is an unorthodox Jewish merchant trader. Henri Deterding is a take-no-prisoners oilman. In 1889, John D. Rockefeller is at the peak of...
How Our Days Became Numbered
Risk and the Rise of the Statistical Individual
Language: English
Release Date: May 18, 2015
Long before the age of "Big Data" or the rise of today's "self-quantifiers," American capitalism embraced "risk"--and proceeded to number our days. Life insurers led the way, developing numerical practices for measuring individuals and groups, predicting their fates,...
The Sounds of Capitalism
Advertising, Music, and the Conquest of Culture
Language: English
Release Date: June 19, 2012
From the early days of radio through the rise of television after World War II to the present, music has been used more and more to sell goods and establish brand identities. And since the 1920s, songs originally written for commercials have become popular songs, and songs written for a popular audience...
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Essays
Language: English
Release Date: March 21, 2017
The “dazzling” and essential portrayal of 1960s America from the author of South and West and The Year of Magical Thinking (The New York Times).
Capturing the tumultuous landscape of the United States, and in particular California, during a pivotal era of social change, the first work of...
After Henry
Essays
Language: English
Release Date: May 9, 2017
Incisive essays on Patty Hearst and Reagan, the Central Park jogger and the Santa Ana winds, from the New York Times–bestselling author of South and West.
In these eleven essays covering the national scene from Washington, DC; California; and New York, the acclaimed author of Slouching Towards...
Collected Essays
Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album, and After Henry
Language: English
Release Date: March 6, 2018
Three essential works that redefined the art of journalism by “one of our sharpest and most trustworthy cultural observers” (The New York Times).
In these masterpieces of razor-sharp reportage, the National Book Award–winning and New York Times–bestselling author proves herself one...
The Americans
Letters from America 1969–1979
Language: English
Release Date: March 3, 2015
“Reading [Cooke] is like spending an evening with him: you may have heard it all before, but never told with such grace and sparkle.” —The New York Times Book Review
As the voice of the BBC’s Letter from America for close to six decades, Alistair Cooke addressed several millions of...
by Alistair Cooke
Language: English
Release Date: March 3, 2015
Language: English
Release Date: March 3, 2015
“There is never going to be anyone else like Cooke, a chronicler of amazing times.” —The Daily Telegraph
As the voice of the BBC’s Letter from America for close to six decades, Alistair Cooke addressed several millions of listeners on five continents. They tuned in every Friday evening...
Dear Mrs. Kennedy
The World Shares Its Grief, Letters November 1963
Language: English
Release Date: October 12, 2010
From the bestselling author of Kennedy Weddings and Diana and Jackie comes a powerful and moving collection of the condolence letters Jacqueline Kennedy received after the assassination of John F. Kennedy
In the weeks and months following the assassination of her husband, First Lady Jacqueline...