A rabble of dead money

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Herbert Mitgang

"Once Upon a Time in New York is a real-life fable, the story of two towering men in an irrepressible time. It is at once the story of Roosevelt's first great test; the turning point of machine control in New York; and the battle that marked the end of the Jazz Age way of political life. It is an unforgettable portrait of Roosevelt's courage, with a cast of gamblers and gun molls, murderers and mistresses. More outrageous than today's headlines and as lively as the era it describes, Once Upon a Time in New York reads like a nonfiction novel."--BOOK JACKET.

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Jan Nederveen Pieterse

For over a century now, America has dominated global politics and the global imagination. Yet as the dollar declines, inequality increases, rates of consumption are unprecedented and American unilateralism comes under fire, such hegemony is increasingly unsustainable. In this provocative new book, leading sociologist Jan Nederveen Pieterse asks whether it?s possible for America to chart a different course.

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Robert B. Reich

"From the greatly admired author of The Work of Nations and The Future of Success, one of America's greatest economic and political thinkers as well as a distinguished public servant in three national administrations, a breakthrough book on the clash between capitalism and democracy. Mid-twentieth-century capitalism has turned into global capitalism, and global capitalism - turbocharged, Web-based, and able to find and make almost anything just about anywhere - has turned into supercapitalism. But as Robert B. Reich makes clear in this eye-opening book, while supercapitalism is working wonderfully well to enlarge the economic pie, democracy - charged with caring for all citizens - is becoming less and less effective under its influence. Reich explains how widening inequalities of income and wealth, heightened job insecurity, and the spreading effects of global warming are the logical outcomes of supercapitalism. He shows us why companies, fighting harder than ever to maintain their competitive positions, have become even more deeply involved in politics; and how average citizens, seeking great deals and invested in the stock market to an unprecedented degree, are increasingly loath to stand by their values if it means biting the hands that feed them. He makes clear how the tools traditionally used to temper America's societal problems - fair taxation, well-funded public education, trade unions - have withered as supercapitalism has burgeoned. Reich sets out a clear course to a vibrant capitalism and a concurrent, equally vibrant democracy. He argues forcefully that the spheres of business and politics must be kept distinct. He calls for an end to the legal fiction that corporations are citizens, as well as the illusion that corporations can be "socially responsible" until laws define social needs. Reich explains why we must stop treating companies as if they were people - and must therefore abolish the corporate income tax and levy it on shareholders instead, hold individuals rather than corporations guilty of criminal conduct, and not expect companies to be "patriotic." For, as Reich says, only people can be citizens, and only citizens should be allowed to participate in democratic decision making."--The Hardcover edition.

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Lawrence J. Oliver

Professor of dramatic literature at Columbia University from 1892 to 1924, scholar, critic, essayist, playwright, and fiction writer, Brander Matthews (1852-1929) was one of the most prominent and influential American "culture brokers" during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book, the first full-length study of his career, explores the literary politics through which Matthews--often in league with his lifelong friend and ally, Theodore Roosevelt--worked to promote literary and cultural "progressivism" within and beyond the scholarly community. This study also reveals how Matthews, long ignored by scholars of American literary and cultural history, fell into undeserved oblivion. From 1880 to 1920, Matthews wielded enormous power from within the center of the New York literary establishment. Publisher's advisor, New York Times book reviewer, and MLS president, he counted W.D. Howells, Mark Twain, and James Weldon Johnson among his intimate friends. Later Matthews was attacked by the Young Intellectuals as a representative "genteel"--Despite such un-"genteel" behavior as championing Twain and literary realism, denouncing provincialism, and fighting to establish American literature in the academy. Matthews' "progressive" responses to such issues as the "Negro problem" and the "woman question" reveal an ideological conservatism. His career is a vivid reminder that academe was as "political" in 1890 as in 1990.