Description

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A collection of essays on class politics in America

In popular retellings of American history, capitalism generally doesn’t feature much as part of the founding or development of the nation. Instead, it is alluded to in figurative terms as opportunity, entrepreneurial vigor, material abundance, and the seven-league boots of manifest destiny.

In this collection of essays, Steve Fraser, the preeminent historian of American capitalism, sets the record straight, rewriting the arc of the American saga with class conflict center stage and mounting a serious challenge to the consoling fantasy of American exceptionalism. From the colonial era to Trump, Fraser recovers the repressed history of debtors’ prisons and disaster capitalism, of confidence men and the reserve armies of the unemployed. In language that is dynamic and compelling, he demonstrates that class is a fundamental feature of American political life and provides essential intellectual tools for a shrewd reading of American history.

About the Author

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Steve Fraser is a historian, writer, and editor. He is the author of The Age of Acquiescence, Every Man a Speculator and Wall Street, among other books, and has written for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and The Nation. He lives in New York City.

Praise For…

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“Fraser is our preeminent historian of America as a capitalist civilization. No one is more attuned to the inner vibrations of our monied culture.”
—Corey Robin, author of The Reactionary Mind

“A spirited collection by an erudite and penetrating essayist. Fraser is an analyst of the culture of late capitalism and, among other things, he demonstrates with impressive clarity the connections between the economic changes we call neoliberalism and the psycho-cultural dramas generated by the siren song of faux populism.”
—Frances Fox Piven, author of Poor People’s Movements

“Steve Fraser is our most incisive and encompassing cultural historian of the two gilded ages that structured American society and its economic ethos in the decades that have bracketed the nation’s fleeting New Deal interregnum. Fraser has captured the emotive logic of capitalist hegemony and the dark appeal it has so often held for millions of acquiescent Americans.”
—Nelson Lichtenstein, author of Who Built America?

“In this collection of bracing essays, Fraser brings to the fore the perils and promise of class warfare and the daunting challenges faced by everyone who hopes to defy history and work for a just society.”
—Jacqueline Jones, author of Goddess of Anarchy

“These essays show that Steve Fraser has long been one of the wisest and most eloquent historians of American capitalism and its discontents. Erudite, passionate, and laced with wit, they are essential reading during our era of great perils and budding hopes for change.”
—Michael Kazin, Professor of History, Georgetown University

“One of our best social historians set the record straight about the mythologies of American capitalism.”
—Peter Dreier, author of Place Matters: Metropolitics for the Twenty-first Century

“[The essays] display his encyclopedic knowledge of US history, especially working-class history.”
—Gabriel Winant, New Republic