Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream

Beyond Outrage: What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix them

Robert B. Reich · 151 pages

Argues that real change can only come when party lines are ignored and people from both sides of the aisle band together to enact common sense policies.

That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back

Thomas L. Friedman, Michael Mandelbaum · 400 pages

America has a huge problem. It faces four major challenges, on which its future depends, and it is failing to meet them. In That Used to Be Us, Thomas L. Friedman, one of our most influential columnists, and Michael Mandelbaum, one of our leading foreign policy thinkers, analyze those challenges -- globalization, the revolution in information technology, the nation's chronic deficits, and its patt

This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class

Elizabeth Warren · 352 pages

"Senator Elizabeth Warren has long been an outspoken champion of America's middle class, and by the time the people of Massachusetts elected her in 2012, she had become one of the country's leading progressive voices. Now, at a perilous moment for our nation, she has written a book that is at once an illuminating account of how we built the strongest middle class in history, a scathing indictment

Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order

Noam Chomsky · 231 pages

In Profit Over People Noam Chomsky takes on neoliberalism, the pro-corporate system of economic and political policies presently waging a form of class war worldwide. By examining the contradictions between the democratic and market principles proclaimed by those in power and those actually practiced, Chomsky critiques the tyranny of the few that restricts the public arena and enacts policies tha

Ill Fares the Land

Tony Judt · 256 pages

In "Ill Fares The Land," Tony Judt, one of our leading historians and thinkers, reveals how we have arrived at our present dangerously confused moment and offers the language we need to address our common needs, rejecting the nihilistic individualism of the far right and the debunked socialism of the past. To find a way forward, Judt argues that we must look to our not so distant past and to socia

Capitalism: A Ghost Story

Arundhati Roy · 130 pages

End This Depression Now!

Paul Krugman · 288 pages

A call-to-arms from Nobel Prize?winning economist and best-selling author Paul Krugman. The Great Recession is more than four years old, and counting. Yet, as Paul Krugman points out in this powerful volley, "Nations rich in resources, talent, and knowledge, all the ingredients for prosperity and a decent standard of living for all, remain in a state of intense pain." How bad have things gotten? H

Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class

Noam Scheiber · 384 pages

Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa

Dambisa Moyo · 188 pages

In "Dead Aid," Dambisa Moyo describes the state of postwar development policy in Africa that has channeled billions of dollars in aid but failed to reduce poverty and increase growth. He offers a new, more hopeful vision of how to address the desperate poverty that plagues millions.

The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire

Tim Schwab · 496 pages

Who Stole the American Dream?

Hedrick Smith · 579 pages

Recounts how the American dream has been dismantled over the past forty years by legislative, electoral, and corporate decisions that have compromised the middle class and minimized individual economic and political power.

Globalization and Its Discontents

Joseph E. Stiglitz · 528 pages

Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense

David Cay Johnston · 344 pages

The bestselling author of Perfectly Legal returns with a powerful new exposeHow does a strong and growing economy lend itself to job uncertainty, debt, bankruptcy, and economic fear for a vast number of Americans? Free Lunch provides answers to this great economic mystery of our time, revealing how today's government policies and spending reach deep into the wallets of the many for the benefit of

The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity

Tim Wu · 224 pages

The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

Barack Obama · 384 pages

Senator Obama calls for a different brand of politics--a politics for those weary of bitter partisanship and alienated by the "endless clash of armies" we see in Congress and on the campaign trail; a politics rooted in the faith, inclusiveness, and nobility of spirit at the heart of our democracy. He explores those forces--from the fear of losing, to the perpetual need to raise money, to the power

The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

Paul Collier · 209 pages

"In this elegant and impassioned synthesis from one of the world's leading experts on Africa and poverty, economist Paul Collier writes persuasively that although nearly five billion of the world's people are beginning to climb from desperate poverty and to benefit from globalization's reach to developing countries, there is a "bottom billion" of the world's poor whose countries, largely immune to

Poverty, by America

Matthew Desmond · 343 pages

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Naomi Klein · 619 pages

**The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism** is a 2007 book by the Canadian author and social activist Naomi Klein. In the book, Klein argues that neoliberal free market policies (as advocated by the economist Milton Friedman) have risen to prominence in some developed countries because of a deliberate strategy of "shock therapy". This centers on the exploitation of national crises (dis

The End of Poverty: How We Can Make It Happen In Our Lifetime

Jeffrey D. Sachs · 416 pages

A landmark exploration of the way out of extreme poverty for the world's poorest citizensAmong the most eagerly anticipated books of any year, this landmark exploration of prosperity and poverty distills the life work of an economist Time calls one of the world's 100 most influential people. Sachs's aim is nothing less than to deliver a big picture of how societies emerge from poverty. To do so he

Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World

Michael Lewis · 220 pages

As Pogo once said, "We have met the enemy and he is us." The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2008 was more than a simple financial phenomenon: it was temptation, offering entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge. Icelanders wanted to stop fishing and become investment bankers. The Greeks wante

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

Barbara Ehrenreich · 240 pages

The author's experience holding low-wage jobs in three parts of the U.S. in the late 1990s.

The Rent Is Too Damn High

Matthew Yglesias

The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics

John B. Judis · 182 pages

"Is the West witnessing a huge political upheaval? As if overnight, many Democrats revolted and passionately backed a socialist named Bernie Sanders; the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, in a stunning rebuke; the vituperative billionaire Donald Trump became the presidential nominee of the Republican Party; and a slew of rebellious parties continued to win election after election i

The Establishment: And How They Get Away with It

Owen Jones · 288 pages

In The Establishment Owen Jones, author of the international bestseller Chavs, offers a biting critique of the British Establishment and a passionate plea for democracy. Behind our democracy lurks a powerful but unaccountable network of people who wield massive power and reap huge profits in the process. In exposing this shadowy and complex system that dominates our lives, Owen Jones sets out on a