Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States – The Epic Story of American Prosperity, From Free Marketers to Keynesians

by Michael Lind

A sweeping and original work of economic history by Michael Lind, one of America’s leading intellectuals, Land of Promise recounts the epic story of America’s rise to become the world’s dominant economy. As ideological free marketers continue to square off against Keynesians in Congress and the press, economic policy remains at the center of political debate. Land of Promise : An Economic History of the United States offers a much-needed historical framework that sheds new light on our past—wisdom that offers lessons essential to our future. Building upon the strength and lucidity of his New York Times Notable Books The Next American Nation and Hamilton’s Republic , Lind delivers a necessary and revelatory examination of the roots of American prosperity—insight that will prove invaluable to anyone interested in exploring how we can move forward.

Genres: History, Economics, Nonfiction, American History, Politics, American, United States

592 pages, Paperback

First published April 17, 2012

About the author

Currently Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation in Washington, Michael Lind has been an editor or staff writer for The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and The New Republic and writes frequently for The New York Times and the Financial Times. He is the author of more than a dozen books of history, political journalism, and fiction, including a poetry chapbook, When You Are Someone Else (Aralia Press, 2002), Bluebonnet Girl (Henry Holt and Co. (BYR), 2003), a children’s book in verse, which won an Oppenheimer Toy Prize for children’s literature, and a narrative poem, The Alamo (Replica Books, 1999), which the Los Angeles Times named as one of the best books of the year. His first collection of verse, Parallel Lives, was published by Etruscan Press in 2007.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Every few generations, the familiar American republic falls apart and must be rebuilt in a generation-long struggle. To date, each American republic has provided more freedom and more opportunity that the one that preceded it. The First Republic abolished aristocracy and feudalism on American soil. The Second Republic abolished slavery. The Third Republic eliminated widespread destitution and sought to suppress the exploitation of wage labor. And each republic has used the technological tools of its era to create a more productive economy with gains shared by more Americans…The United States could emerge from the trial of the Great Recession as a more productive nation with more widespread sharing of the gains from growth. Or it could go into relative and even absolute decline, losing its technological and industrial edge to foreign competitors and fissioning at home along the lines of caste and class…National renewal or national decline? The question will be decided by today’s Americans.”
- Michael Lind, Land of Promise

I’ve been thinking about the economy lately, which not only sounds pretentious, but is also unusual. Usually, I think about baseball, or wine, or whether it’s my turn to pick up the kids from daycare, or how to appear productive at work, when in fact I am not being productive at all. Economics doesn’t really make the list. Frankly, with the exception of the ten minutes I spend listening to Kai Ryssdal’s Marketplace: Morning Report, it’s a subject I mainly ignore.

Today, ignorance doesn’t seem like the best posture to take. These are interesting economic times. We are just a few short years removed from a lengthy period of slow growth and high unemployment known as the Great Recession. There’s a man in the White House who preached a broadly populist economic message stressing protectionism, which pushes against a long period of free trade. A major-party candidate created a groundswell of support while proudly declaring himself to be a socialist, turning a longtime pejorative into a selling-point. And also there are robots, waiting to take our jobs, achieve sentience, and become our overlords. Like I said: interesting economic times.

All these factors (plus some reading I did on Hoover, Roosevelt, and the Great Depression) led me to Michael Lind’s Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States. When I don’t know exactly where to start on a topic, I typically try to find an overview that touches on as many themes as possible. Land of Promise fits that bill. In 482 pages of text, it stretches from the early, post-revolutionary, pre-industrial economy, all the way to the tail end of the Great Recession of the first decade of the 21st century. It tries to do everything, ends up not doing quite enough, but still manages to offer a great many things to mull over, insights that reveal the past and helps sketch the future.

The first thing that needs to be said is that Land of Promise is not an economics textbook. I know this, because I have several economics textbooks left over from college that I never got around to reselling (meaning, of course, that despite getting an A in micro and macroeconomics, I utter am utter failure in practical economics). There is little to no discussion of demand curves, price elasticity, or calculations regarding the marginal propensity to consume. Instead, Lind sticks to broader concepts, and attempts to explore them in narrative fashion through personalities (inventors, financiers, politicians), events (bank panics, stock market crashes), competing theories (Hamiltonian vs. Jeffersonian visions, supply side vs. demand side) and innovations (steam, electricity, computing).

The story Lind tells is one of technological progress followed by disruption followed by adaptation (however slowly and imperfectly):

When the United States won its independence and organized its Constitution, the world’s economy was still the preindustrial economy that had existed for millennia since the invention of agriculture – an economy in which human and animal muscle provided most of the power, supplemented where possible by the force of windmills and water mills, in which the burning of wood and other biomass provided heat and light, and in which passengers and freight were most efficiently moved by water. Within decades of the Founding, America began to be transformed by the industrial revolution, which has radiated outward from workshops and laboratories in three waves – the first industrial revolution based on steam and telegraphy, the second industrial revolution based on electric and oil motors, and the third industrial revolution based on computers. Each wave of technological innovation has destabilized existing economic, social, and political arrangements, forcing Americans to adapt by creating, in effect, a series of new republics while keeping, for the sake of continuity, the old name of the United States of America and the old federal Constitution of 1787, with formal and much more important informal amendments.

Lind structures Land of Promise in accordance with this thesis statement. There are four large sections covering the Preindustrial Economy, the Age of Steam, the Motor Age, and the Information Age. Each section contains a number of chapters, while each chapter is further subdivided into mini-discussions that are titled in bold and are as short as half a page. The advantage of this framework, I suppose, is that you never get bogged down. If you don’t like one of the mini-discussions within a chapter, it’s over very quickly. The downside, obviously, is that this is the antithesis of a seamless narrative. Lind is constantly hopping from one area to the next, as though the topic consists of hot coals, and he has only bare feet.

Lind’s lack of focus frustrated me. Fascinating subject matter appeared and then disappeared with the darting speed of minnows in shallow water. For instance, Lind is a believer in oligopolies and cartels. He thinks that in certain economic sectors, they help avoid ruinous competition, achieve economies of scale, and get rid of smaller and less efficient firms. This is a viewpoint worth exploring, because even though the US has long been dominated by mega-corporations, Americans have historically distrusted combinations. This distrust predates Teddy’s trust-busting and Frank Norris’s The Octopus, reaching back all the way to the Founding. I wanted Lind to investigate this with me, so that I could better understand the evidence before I head down to the bar to start an argument. Instead of honing in on this debate, though, Lind just moves on, preferring the general to the specific. That’s a shame, because there’s a lot of fluff in Land of Promise that could have been excised and replaced. I’m thinking, for example, that 26 pages devoted to Vannevar Bush and IBM isn’t really necessary. (Yes, I counted).

It’s also worth noting that Lind seemed intent on delivering a book accessible to general readers. This is demonstrated by choice of what to put in, what to leave out, and what to stress. Too often, at least for my taste, Lind provides a warmed-over anecdote (do we really need to hear more about Henry Ford and the Model T?), instead of more complicated – and more important – items (no Greenback Party? Really?)

That said, my frustrations were ultimately overcome by what worked. I think Lind does a really good job on the Great Depression, touching on the multiple causes, and critiquing the responses of both Herbert Hoover (too little, too late) and Franklin D. Roosevelt (also too little, though many of his New Deal programs worked better as reform rather than recovery). Just as good is his treatment of the Great Dismantling. This period, following the WWII boom years, and beginning – in Lind’s account – with Jimmy Carter, was marked by deregulation and the repeal of many legislative reforms enacted by FDR. In Lind’s view, this has led to the decline of the middle class, and an economy more prone to booms and busts.

Lind is an interesting author with an eclectic list of works. He is a confounder of the New America think tank, occupying the dying role of a public intellectual. Whether you agree or not, his resume makes him worth hearing out. Certainly, his views don’t make him doctrinaire. He is certainly of the demand-side school, a proponent of progressive taxes, regulations, and government spending to spur growth. This sounds liberal. But he is also in favor of tightened immigration (favoring “useful” immigrants with higher education, over immigrants with family ties – a position that requires a lot more amplification) and increased industrial protections to increase wage growth. He also dismisses climate change with one sentence. This sounds not-so-liberal. In fact, these latter positions sound a lot like – well, it’s a testament to Lind’s foresight that his 2012 publication feels extremely relevant.

Land of Promise is flawed but valuable. It left me wanting more, but gave me direction on where to go next for a deeper look. Despite my qualms, it was a satisfying reading experience. Lind gives you some idea of where we’ve been and some idea of where we might be going.

It does not, unfortunately, tell us anything about the robots waiting to rule the earth, and I assume that is just how the robots want things to be.

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Land of Promise is uneven with some strengths but considerable weaknesses. Its problem is it attempts to be a text book type history and an extended essay. As a result, the text book aspect suffers. Lind, a cofounder of the New America Foundation, use vignettes, many only two or three shallow paragraphs long to support historical facts, persons and inventions.

Lind successfully describes a conflict occurring from the start of the Republic until the present. This is the conflict between Washington and Hamilton on the one hand and Jefferson and Jackson on the other. The former believed government, especially the federal government, should sponsor and support economic growth. Jefferson believed in limited government for a small-farmer society and economy. A hallmark of Jackson’s administration was a long political battle leading to the end of the Bank of the United States. This resulted in a problem laden system of small banks lasting until 1912 with the founding of the Federal Reserve. Lind is on Washington’s and Hamilton’s side.

If Tea Party supporters and other contemporary advocates of small government read Land of Promise, they will find a challenge to a cherished belief: the federal government from the support of canals, railroads, autos, electric grids, the Manhattan Project, space exploration, and the development of the Internet, has supported U. S. economic growth. Lind documents federal support through four stages of U. S. economic development, pre-industrial when the U. S. was dominated by the British; the age of steam, the motor age and now the information age.

Lind takes an opposite stand from Adam Smith’s thesis of free trade and comparative advantage, all pillars of Economics 101. The author argues for high, protective tariffs and believes that if Hamilton had not successfully established high tariffs protecting nascent American manufacturers, the U. S. would be a third world agricultural economy. England claimed it wanted free trade, but its actual policy was protection of British industry supplied by raw materials, particularly cotton. Britain significantly opposed the development of American manufacturing. The American comparative advantage was slave based cotton growing not manufacturing.

Land of Promise shows how FDR’s New Deal with its safety net and strong government ended in the 1970’s under Carter and Reagan. A social contract was broken. Lind, using Henry Clay’s concept of an American System says four events are needed to restore the middle class and economic growth. They are innovation, manufacturing, infrastructure and finance. Lind strongly supports government sponsored R&D as government is the only institution large enough and well-funded enough to do innovative R&D which can be used in manufacturing and infrastructure development. He fosters a government R&D bank.

This mixed book could have been vastly improved by a strong editor who would have separated it into two books. One would be an excellent essay describing the Washington/Hamilton and Jefferson/Jackson influences through U. S. economic history. The other would be, at best, a middle school economic history text.

[Christopher McQuain · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's **** as a source of well-researched, decently organized, convincingly put information, but it was my mistake, as a layperson (not an economist or student), to read it cover to cover. It's awfully dry, literal, and heavy on rundowns of intricate numbers when read that way. Any of the chapters would make excellent research/information material, but it's generally written more like a textbook than something that "flows," whatever that means (I've read textbooks that flow, too, but this is more like a stereotypical textbook). Again, my needs as a reader probably don't even match the actual purpose of this book, and I'm not sorry I read it, but it's probably not the best introduction to the ideas on which it goes into such meticulous but not very engrossing or accessible detail.

[The American Conservative]

'Any good book of history tells a useful tale about the present as well as the past. And a great book of history looks into the future as well. Michael Lind has written such a book in Land of Promise, a volume simultaneously scholarly and entertaining—bereft, blessedly, of graphs and equations. Yet at the same time, the work poses a serious challenge to the contemporary orthodoxies of left and right, offering a manifesto for a future far different from what the policymakers in either political party might imagine.'

Read the full review, "Hamilton Shrugged," on our website:
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...

[Todd Stockslager · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review title: Brilliant history illuminates possible futures

Lind marshalls powerful evidence to prove his powerful premise in this broad-stroke economic history of the United States. His thesis can be stated simply: technical revolutions in energy and communication technologies take a generation to achieve wide economic adoption and drive national markets with changes that disrupt politics and force changes in elections and policies. Lind goes on to show how three such revolutions have occurred in US history :

The steam engine and telegraph invented around the time of the founding of the American republic made their disruptive impact in the 1830s to 1860s, culminating in the political transition from a Jeffersonian agrarian sectionalized republic to a powerful central government in a country knit by steel rails.

The internal combustion engine and electricity drove the second technical revolution in the late 19th century, with an extended period of adoption and economic growth that ended abruptly with the Great Depression and the transition to a combination of government policies of New Deal stimulus and protectionism.

The third technical revolution, global physical infrastructure powered by jet aircraft and container ships, and global digital infrastructure powered by the computer and the Internet, has made its disruptive impact felt in the last 30 years: global corporations, transition from an industrial to service economy, and massive changes in banking and financial markets culminating in the 2008 mortgage meltdown.

Lind writes like a good historian: he states his premises, he proves his premises with solid and well documented history, and he recaps his argument at each step of the way to ensure that readers are still with him. This is not dry economic or financial history, but a history of the way economic conditions have changed in response to technology changes, and how those economic conditions have driven political changes, but only after the resolution of the dissonance between the old technology and the new, the old republic and the new. At 450+ pages of text and 70 pages of footnotes for followup reading, this paperback edition (oddly enough the second consecutive book I have read with one of Thomas Hart Benton's Americana paintings on the cover) reads quickly.

As we approach a decade since the 2008 events that Lind calls the Great Recession, the political shift has yet to take place. In fact, as I read through the political shifts--we might call the preindustrial era the Age of Jefferson, rhe steam age the Age of Lincoln, and the motor age the Age of Roosevelt--I wondered who might put their name on this future political era. Might it be the Age of Trump?

To be clear, Land of Promise was written before Donald Trump's surprising 2016 election victory, and his name isn't mentioned anywhere in the book. But as I read through the pivotal political events and names of leaders as they responded to the disruptive economic impacts of the technologies that shaped the country they were trying to govern, I was reminded of the current economic disruptions we face (immigration issues, loss of manufacturing jobs, an economic "recovery" that has left behind large sectors of the economy and sections of the country) and I saw comparisons and parallels to President Trump. Faced with disruptive technologies and economic conditions, our past leaders have at times seemed incompetent, harsh, and just plain wrong (Andrew Jackson and Herbert Hoover come to mind); other leaders have risen to the challenge and reshaped the world and stamped their names on the era, like Lincoln and Roosevelt.

I did not vote for Trump and have found him personally repugnant and many of his policy proposals wrong, but I can now understand what his supporters and voters were responding to after reading Lind's descriptions of the disruptions of the third technical revolution. And as Lind describes his proposed solutions to them, I can see how some of President Trump's proposals may implement Lind's recommended solutions. For example, the recently announced relaxation of some environmental regulations imposed under President Obama will provide relief to energy and manufacturing companies as they attempt to reestablish a manufacturing base sufficient to our national security: "But in a multipolar world with other independent centers of power, the United States must resume the concern with military and industrial independence....If the United States allows itself to be deindustrialized, as a result of the mercantilist policies of other countries or the offshoring decisions of its own corporations, it will cease to be a military power of the first rank." (p. 463-464)

And on immigration policy, for which candidate and now President Trump has been most often abused, Lind recommends much like Trump closing off illegal immigration "by a combination of strict sanctions on employers with the help of a national ID card, tough border enforcement and, if necessary, a one-time amnesty for some illegal immigrants coupled with symbolic penalties for their violations of law. No immigration policy is possible unless immigration laws are enforced. " (p. 480) Lind also calls for basing legal immigration policies on the skills of the applicant, not family connections or national quotas, to protect low wage American laborers and increase skilled labor for American companies desperate to compete on the world stage.

The political republic that will resolve the dissonance of the global, computer age remains in the future. Will President Trump be a Jackson holding on to the bypassed policies of a bygone era, or will we speak in the future of the Age of Trump? Frankly, before reading this book I never would have entertained the latter as a possibility, so Lind has done a great observation illuminating both the past and paths to the future that give me hope. And one hope after reading this book is that President Trump or his advisors have also read it and understand their role in blazing the best path to the future.

[Bernie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Michael Lind, in his book "Land of Promise" gives, for a book covering hundreds of years of American Economic history, a thorough review.

He divides Americas economic history into several divisions. Each division is marked by a substantial change in technology with a resulting time lag in government policies that respond to such technology. That this occurred is certainly accurate.

While the book is a great primer on the important events and actors in US economic history, it has a marked bias in favor of government action and intervention in positively shaping and responding to economic events.

While Lind presents evidence for his positions, they are, I think often selective or inadequately developed. Some of his propositions are that:

* Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty was a success
* The middle class prospers under highly regulated capitalism and suffers under deregulation
* Deregulation has generally transformed healthy industries in to "sick" industries.
* Most transformative technologies in the information age were made possible by
government research and development.
*Minimum wage legislation has bolstered the economy, especially benefiting the middle class
* High tariffs enabled the development of the economy toward manufactured products.
* The Hawley-Smoot tariff did little to start or worsen the Great Depression
* New Deal liberals, starting with FDR were the primary drivers behind the growth in
American prosperity.
* The American entry into WWII was primarily motivated by an interest in
countering German imperialism.
* Government subsidization of the early railroad industry was essential for its development.

I thought that the book was worth reading but because of its bias towards the benefits of government intervention in the economy, it should be balanced by reading books detailing the benefits of limited government in order to accurately ascertain Americas astonishingly successful economic history.

[charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not qualified to review this book since its the first of its kind that I've ever read. I have no idea if its perspective is revolutionary or a rehash of someone else's work.


So, with that massive hedge... To me, the perspective and consistent argument of the book is invaluable knowledge for all of us as we quibble over tiny little issues like the nation's economic policies. Seeing the country's history through an economic lens, justifies and clarifies the pure historical narrative that we are usually spoon fed. It makes one realize it was and always is about money and business, and to bury that part of people's motivations in a historical record is foolish. Major historical events are always about money and resources.


If you divide the universe into Right and Left, this book lands soundly on one side and ridicules the other over and over. So it's history told with a purpose... What's the right path for the country today? What were the root causes of the 2008 meltdown? How did that meltdown echo previous downturns and what were the most effective ways to reignite the upward arc of the nation? If you know all the answers to those questions already, this book is not for you, because the author has his opinion which he clearly states over and over and over. He's going to either piss you off or bore you to tears. But, I read it with an open mind and found the logic of the story infallible. I always thought the economy had so many moving pieces that to understand cause and effect was impossible, which explains why we are always arguing about how to manage it. There are a lot of moving parts but the author successfully dissects them and shows the reader how they interrelate. Hey, that's quite an accomplishment!

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A breeze through the political-economic history of the US. If Lind left it at that it would've been a handy reference guide, full of factoids. But he has an agenda, which is to relate the Hamiltonian/Clay system with that of FDR and Johnson, despite the former being domestic laissez faire and nationalism and the latter a regulated welfare state and internationalism. The Hamilton/Clay system was meant to build the industrial capacity of the United States and the federal government was less than 5% of GDP with no income tax. The popular legacy of the New Deal is the second New Deal of statuary minimum labor standards and social security passed by congress as opposed to the corporatist industry cartelization of the early New Deal largely invalidated by the supreme court as giving too much power to the executive branch. There are some common threads however with a general policy of labor protection and national bank of Hamilton to the reconstruction finance corporation of Hoover.
He goes on to argue that we have abandoned this path since the 1970's and we have lost ground ever since under the auspices of globalism. His prescription for the future is what he names awkwardly "service sector Fordism" by stronger labor protections and universal social programs. The free market alternative is a Friedmanite voucher system that utilizes graduated income and program supports within a deregulated market and is more consumer than producer focused. The “producerist” or populist approach is restraining industry and government by antitrust and pairing back globalism. Some combination of these could be the future depending which side wins, such as voucher nativism on the right.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lind, a onetime conservative activist, offers an interesting and slightly different take on America's growth and its prospects. The book is well-researched but a little uneven. He offers a version of economic history that highlights how most of our economic advances, increases in wealth and value have originated with government spending, and how the hollowing out of the middle class by busting unions, off-shoring manufacturing jobs and stagnate wage growth for the last 20 years threaten that prosperity going forward. Lind sees the striking, and growing, gaps between rich and poor as a societal challenge way beyond the Occupy Wall Street rhetoric. Alas, his prescriptions -- which push the county back toward the New Deal and away from tax cuts, entitlement cuts and free-for-all immigration laws -- seem completely unsalable in the current political climate.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book goes through the _entire_ economic history of the United States. The main takeaways for the present day seem to be:

- There's a long-running debate between Jeffersonian (small, independent producers) and Hamiltonian (large, centrally coordinated) ideas of how the American economy should work.
- Over the last thirty years, we've moved away from what he calls "Fordism": the idea that workers should earn enough to consume the goods they produce. For society, it's better to have wealth spread across the poor and middle class because they tend to consume more with it. When the wealthy get wealthier, they tend to put the extra capital in increasingly risky investments like stocks and real estate, which leads to more booms and busts.
- He thinks we're ripe for a new social contract to replace the New Deal system, which has gradually been unraveled.

[Max de Freitas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lind states: "The New Deal liberal system of trickle-up, demand-side economics succeeded in creating a middle class that was also a mass market for products of American factories and farms." Since that glorious post-war period, Republicans have systematically destroyed the middle class in their ceaseless pursuit of bribes, thinly veiled as campaign contributions, by shifting the tax burden away from their wealthy benefactors onto the hapless middle class. They have also showered arms merchants with largesse at the expense of American living standards. Angry at their declining comfort, the middle class elected a voluble lout who promises to return the country to its former greatness but implements the same policies that caused its economic collapse.

[Shishir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Historical economical political perspective, changes economic thoughts, left and right wing. Examples go to show the cyclical nature of changes in thinking; protectionism vs free market. Examining swings between Government involvements to ‘hands free’. Pros and cons well demonstrated through numerous examples. Cyclical booms and busts – lading to loosening and tightening of fiscal and monetary policies led by different parties navigating through changing times of three Industrial revolutions and Wars. The various periods defined through 3 republics preceded by 3 Industrial revolutions quickly followed by busts of depression / Wars etc

[Colin McEvoy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Provides an excellent overview of the history of the American economy. I knew many of the individual elements of this history, but it shined a light on a lot of the gaps in my knowledge and illustrated very well how they all tie together. It doesn't go particularly in-depth into most of the specific aspects of this history -- the book is broken into numerous 2-to-4 page vignettes which could each themselves be an entire book -- but Land of Promise serves as a strong, comprehensive broad overview, and a good starting point for anyone looking to improve their understanding of the American economy.

[Graham Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting and thorough account of the entire history of the United States, from an economic perspective. Lind divides American political factions into Hamilton vs Jefferson instead of the normal liberal vs conservative. He slightly strangely favours cartels, but makes a good case for them. He rightly points out the crucial role that state investment has played in American progress throughout history, from infant-industry protectionism to the development of the internet. The chapter on Vannevar Bush is very good, it's incredible the role he played in post-war America alongside his famous "As We May Think" paper.

[Hundeschlitten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lind believes in the centralization of economic and political authority, in the Hamiltonian view of an expansive government, out to organize and control critical aspects of the nation's economy for the people's own good. And I generally do not. Nonetheless, I found this book easy to read and generally interesting. I remain as unconvinced as ever in the wisdom of a society run by central planners, but Lind's arguments only rarely get in the way of his elucidations of the economic factors that have driven the epic shifts in American society.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a left-leaning overview of US economic history -- two hundred and fifty years in five hundred pages! Lind places an emphasis on the destabilizing effects of technological change, arguing that because of the periodic reorganization of industry around new technology, "every few generations the familiar American republic falls apart and must be rebuilt." The book is levelheaded and approachable -- especially when it comes to the nebulous areas of trade and monetary policy -- but the flip side is that it's basically a textbook.

[Betty Utley · Rating 4 out of 5]

-I need to make more time for this type of reading; - economics, who'd have thought? - myriad assortment of historical events are tied upon each other with ah ha moments, - of course, given xyz, how could that NOT have happened? - Coming shortly after reading Einstein's Dreams I'm caught up with time consequences and events. I found this fascinating and think this book should be taught instead of the vast majority of US History textbooks I've seen.

[A.J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A superb economic and political history of the United States. Lind's premise is easily understood and well argued. I probably did not need much convincing already, but Lind's case will surely persuade others that we've been here before - and we'll be back again if the lessons of our history go unlearned.

[Tom Oakley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought the economic history of early America was excellent. Much better than John Steele Gordon's book An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power. The last several chapters of Lind's book were very much more of an essay and did not flow as well as the earlier parts of the book. That said it was an interesting read and I found him a fascinating speaker/presenter.

[Alexander Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book, very interesting depiction of US Economic History beginning with the colonial cotton and fur trade and ending with contemporary industry. Written with very intriguing statistics and historical accuracy with a unique blend of humor and personality that makes the book read like a novel and present information like a paper.

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This work looks at the economic history of the United States. The author talks about five economic periods and three historical periods in American history. He also predicts what American economy will look like in the future.

[Matt Bertelsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book. Paid a lot of lip service to how the political landscape changes but doesn't really describe how. Also the narrative jumped around a lot chronologically which made it feel a little disjointed.

Still, worth the read if interested in the narrative of Jackson vs Hamilton systems.

[George McDonald · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lind is a strong believer in the value of demand-driven economics. He does a good job of tracing the rise and fall of the competing Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian economic philosophies. His description of from the Roosevelt era through the 1980's is especially interesting and compelling.

[Paulina]

Interesting but it was a bit of a slog to get to the end.

[Gordon Howard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starts out slowly with a brief and well-worn U.S. history, but gets more interesting as it gets to modern times, with some well-thought out contrarianism to free market ideology.

[Ellen Pierson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sweeping, yet accessible, this book traces a sometimes hard to follow theme (the economy!) through familiar terrain in U.S. history.

[Ethan Jacobs · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it. Thorough but not totally linear, the author paints a pretty clear picture of an American economy that succeeded through innovation and a system of regulated trade.

[Nathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very boring. It lacks central characters, or an overarching story, so it is not "pop history." It's like a series of small essays on all parts of American economy. I gave up on it.

[Fred R · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't share Lind's politics, and his up with Hamilton down with Jefferson views tend to obscure more than reveal, but this is a very good, idiosyncratic history.

[Eric Bottorff · Rating 1 out of 5]

Solid on the facts, but this reads like an extended Wikipedia entry. I'd say it'd be useful as a reference work, but we already have the actual Wikipedia.