Fleming Community Library

Why some are so rich and some so poor.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) was one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century. He was professor of economics at Harvard University and served as U.S. ambassador to India during the Kennedy administration. He wrote more than fifty books, including American Capitalism, The Affluent Society, and The New Industrial State (Princeton). In Economics in Perspective, renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith presents a compelling...

"From the author of 1491--the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas--a deeply engaging new history that explores the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs. More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed totally different suites of plants and animals. Columbus's voyages brought them back together--and marked the beginning...

"Economists have long based their forecasts on financial aggregates such as price-earnings ratios, asset prices, and exchange rate fluctuations, and used them to produce statistically informed speculations about the future--with limited success. Robert Shiller employs such aggregates in his own forecasts, but has famously complemented them with observations about the influence of mass psychology on certain events. This approach has come to be known...

In the century after the Civil War, an economic revolution improved the American standard of living in ways previously unimaginable. Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, home appliances, motor vehicles, air travel, air conditioning, and television transformed households and workplaces. With medical advances, life expectancy between 1870 and 1970 grew from forty-five to seventy-two years. Weaving together a vivid narrative, historical anecdotes, and...

Examines history's most turbulent economic and political periods to reveal why the times ahead will likely be radically different from those in recent memory.

Details the work and ideas of men and women who were influential in the creation and evolution of modern economics, such as Charles Dickens, Henry Mayhew, Alfred Marshal, Irving Fisher, and others.

"The transition from an agricultural economy to an industrial one in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the West caused one of the great upheavals in the history of the world. Words and images document the people, places, and events caught up in this transformative time"--Provided by the publisher.

With stark poignancy and political dispassion, Tightrope draws us deep into an "other America." The authors tell this story, in part, through the lives of some of the children with whom Kristof grew up, in rural Yamhill, Oregon, an area that prospered for much of the twentieth century but has been devastated in the last few decades as blue-collar jobs disappeared. About one-quarter of the children on Kristof's old school bus died in adulthood from...

The author describes how things are getting better and explains why. Prosperity comes from everybody working for everyone else. The habit of exchange and specialization--which started more than 100,000 years ago--has created a collective brain that sets human living standards on a rising trend. The mutual dependence, trust, and sharing that result are causes for hope, not despair. It covers the entire sweep of human history from the Stone Age to the...