A leading economic historian traces the evolution of American capitalism from the colonial era to the present—and argues that we’ve reached a turning point that will define the era ahead.
“The best one-volume history of American capitalism . . . It is impossible to understand the United States without understanding its economic history. This book, from one of the nation’s forem...
A leading economic historian traces the evolution of American capitalism from the colonial era to the present—and argues that we’ve reached a turning point that will define the era ahead.
“The best one-volume history of American capitalism . . . It is impossible to understand the United States without understanding its economic history. This book, from one of the nation’s foremost historians of capitalism, brings that important and endlessly fascinating story to life.”—Sven Beckert, author of Empire of Cotton
Today, in the midst of a new economic crisis and severe political discord, the nature of capitalism in United States is at a crossroads. Since the market crash and Great Recession of 2008, historian Jonathan Levy has been teaching a course to help his students understand everything that had happened to reach that disaster and the current state of the economy, but in doing so he discovered something more fundamental about American history. Now, in an ambitious single-volume history of the United States, he reveals how, from the beginning of U.S. history to the present, capitalism in America has evolved through four distinct ages and how the country’s economic evolution is inseparable from the nature of American life itself.
The Age of Commerce spans the colonial era through the outbreak of the Civil War, a period of history in which economic growth and output largely depended on enslaved labor and was limited by what could be drawn from the land and where it could be traded. The Age of Capital traces the impact of the first major leap in economic development following the Civil War: the industrial revolution, when capitalists set capital down in factories to produce commercial goods, fueled by labor moving into cities. But investments in the new industrial economy led to great volatility, most dramatically with the onset of the Great Depression in 1929. The Depression immediately sparked the Age of Control, when the government took on a more active role in the economy, first trying to jump-start it and then funding military production during World War II. Skepticism of government intervention in the Cold War combined with recession and stagflation in the 1970s led to a crisis of industrial capitalism and the withdrawal of political will for regulation. In the Age of Chaos that followed, the combination of deregulation and the growth of the finance industry created a booming economy for some but also striking inequalities and a lack of oversight that led directly to the crash of 2008.
In Ages of American Capitalism, Jonathan Levy proves that, contrary to political dogma, capitalism in the United States has never been just one thing. Instead, it has morphed throughout the country’s history—and it’s likely changing again right now.
Jonathan Levy is a professor in the Department of History and the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. His first book, Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America, won the Organization of American Historians’ Frederick Jackson Turner Award, Ellis W. Hawley Prize, and Avery O. Craven Award, as well as the American Soci...
Jonathan Levy is a professor in the Department of History and the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. His first book, Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America, won the Organization of American Historians’ Frederick Jackson Turner Award, Ellis W. Hawley Prize, and Avery O. Craven Award, as well as the American Society for Legal History’s William Nelson Cromwell Book Prize. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.
是什么导致了大萧条?米尔顿·弗里德曼(Milton Friedman)和安娜·施瓦茨(Anna Schwartz)在《美国货币史》(A Monetary History of the United States,1963)中给出了一个至今仍备受推崇的学术途释。该观点认为,大萧条是一系列来自外部的货币和金融动荡冲击生产、交换和消费的实体经济所导致的结果,而美联储决策失误令情况进一步恶化了,假如没有这些错误政策,实体经济很可能会迅速完成自我纠正,回复到自然的市场均衡状态。当然,决策失误是既成事实,而它们的确不必要地加重了大萧条的破坏力。但是,在“实体经济”和“金融一货币经济”之间做出断然且草率的切分,解决不了问题。要想给出有说服力的解释,必须将它们结合起来,而不能把投机性投资的动态置于实体经济恒久不变的市场均衡状态之外。 (查看原文)
书名Ages of American Capitalism: A History of the United States,包含两大主题:美国资本主义时代,一部美国经济生活的编年史。始于17世纪英国殖民者定居北美,延续至今,时间跨度长达360年。 作者Jonathan Levy从亚当•斯密(Adam Smith)、约翰•梅纳德•凱恩斯(J...
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0 有用 Jimmy47 2023-09-05 14:29:09 黑龙江
万维刚精英日课5解读 吉尔德推崇企业家创新这个理念是正确的,但是我们也要看到,不同历史时期的创新有非常不同的形式。它有时候表现为政治,有时候表现为社会,有时候表现为资本。而发展中国家的经济增长,则又是另一个故事。
0 有用 50centparty 2024-04-14 11:33:48 美国
非常适合入门
0 有用 老魁 2025-11-10 11:33:17 上海
历史细节满满的一本巨著,历史总是远看清晰,近看模糊的。二战之后的中产阶级快速形成和崛起,到石油危机为止的大繁荣,现在总结和概括起来脉络很清楚。而这之后的大混乱、大调整和大衰退,只能看到普通人靠工资收入越来越难以活得体面,资产升值越来越成为社会阶层分化和固化的基本机制,却看不清楚前路向何处去。
0 有用 L1ize 2025-05-28 10:13:53 美国
好长啊…读啊读还是读不完😧仔细看了下相对熟悉的21世纪部分,也没发现有啥特别。
0 有用 抠脚大仙 2024-10-28 17:32:16 陕西
freaks of fortune