Makes a reader feel like a time traveler plopped down among men who were by turns vicious and visionary.--The Christian Science Monitor

The modern American economy was the creation of four men: Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan. They were the giants of the Gilded Age, a moment of riotous growth that established America as the richest, most inventive, and most productive country on the planet.

Acclaimed author Charles R. Morris vividly brings the men and their times to life. The ruthlessly competitive Carnegie, the imperial Rockefeller, and the provocateur Gould were obsessed with progress, experiment, and speed. They were balanced by Morgan, the gentleman businessman, who fought, instead, for a global trust in American business. Through their antagonism and their verve, they built an industrial behemoth--and a country of middle-class consumers. The Tycoons tells the incredible story of how these four determined men wrenched the economy into the modern age, inventing a nation of full economic participation that could not have been imagined only a few decades earlier.

In the thirty years after the Civil War, the United States blew by Great Britain to become the greatest economic power in world history. That is a well-known period in history, when titans like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan walked the earth.

But as Charles R. Morris shows us, the platform for that spectacular growth spurt was built in the first half of the century. By the 1820s, America was already the world's most productive manufacturer, and the most intensely commercialized society in history. The War of 1812 jumpstarted the great New England cotton mills, the iron centers in Connecticut and Pennsylvania, and the forges around the Great Lakes. In the decade after the War, the Midwest was opened by entrepreneurs. In this beautifully illustrated book, Morris paints a vivid panorama of a new nation buzzing with the work of creation. He also points out the parallels and differences in the nineteenth century American/British standoff and that between China and America today.

Previously published as The Trillion Dollar Meltdown

Now fully updated with the latest financial developments, this is the bestselling book that briefly and brilliantly explains how we got into the economic mess that is the Credit Crunch. With the housing markets unravelling daily and distress signals flying throughout the rest of the economy, there is little doubt that we are facing a fierce recession. In crisp, gripping prose, Charles R. Morris shows how got into this mess. He explains the arcane financial instruments, the chicanery, the policy misjudgments, the dogmas, and the delusions that created the greatest credit bubble in world history. Paul Volcker slew the inflation dragon in the early 1980s, and set the stage for the high performance economy of the 1980s and 1990s. But Wall Street's prosperity soon tilted into gross excess. The astronomical leverage at major banks and their hedge fund and private equity clients led to massive disruption in global markets. A quarter century of free-market zealotry that extolled asset stripping, abusive lending, and hedge fund secrecy will go down in flames with it. Continued denial and concealment could cause the crisis to stretch out for years, but financial and government leaders are still downplaying the problem. The required restructuring will be at least as painful as the very difficult period of 1979-1983. The Two Trillion-Dollar Meltdown, updated to include the latest financial developments, is indispensable to understanding how the world economy has been put on the brink.

Hailed as an astute book of enormous importance (Sherwin Nuland), The Surgeons follows the team at one of the world's premier cardiac surgery and transplant centers. Given unprecedented access, Charles R. Morris recounts in thrilling detail a late-night against-the-clock harvest run to secure a precious transplantable organ, the heartbreaking story of a child's failed transplant, and more. Along the way, Morris reflects on how doctors really think, rising health care costs, and the future of health care in America.

This book is about public policy making in New York during the zenith of the great liberal experiment, from 1960, Mayor Robert Wagner's third term, through John V. Lindsay, Abraham Beame, and, finally, to Edward Koch and the inevitable return of fiscal conservatism.

The bigger they come the harder they fall. When New York City fell and its intricate, often exotic, budget gimmickry came unstuck, they foundations of every other large city in America shook. If we are not to relive this history it is important to learn the lessons taught so cogently and entertainingly in this book.

The Great Crash of 1929 profoundly disrupted the United States' confident march toward becoming the world's superpower. The breakneck growth of 1920s America -- with its boom in automobiles, electricity, credit lines, radio, and movies -- certainly presaged a serious recession by the decade's end, but not a depression. The totality of the collapse shocked the nation, and its duration scarred generations to come.

In this lucid and fast-paced account of the cataclysm, award-winning writer Charles R. Morris pulls together the intricate threads of policy, ideology, international hatreds, and sheer individual cantankerousness that finally pushed the world economy over the brink and into a depression. While Morris anchors his narrative in the United States, he also fully investigates the poisonous political atmosphere of postwar Europe to reveal how treacherous the environment of the global economy was. It took heroic financial mismanagement, a glut-induced global collapse in agricultural prices, and a self-inflicted crash in world trade to cause the Great Depression.

Deeply researched and vividly told, A Rabble of Dead Money anatomizes history's greatest economic catastrophe -- while noting the uncanny echoes for the present.

Get your Ford and its 385 Series 429- or 460-ci big-block engine, also known as the Lima engine, back in action using this comprehensive rebuilding guide.

In this revised edition of How to Rebuild Big-Block Ford Engines, now titled Ford 429/460 Engines: How to Rebuild, Ford expert Charles Morris covers all the procedures, processes, and techniques required to rebuild your powerplant. Step-by-step text provides details for determining whether your engine actually needs a rebuild, preparation and removal, disassembly, inspection, cleaning, machining and parts selection, reassembly, start-up, and tuning.

Also included is a chapter on building the special Boss 429 engines, as well as a bonus chapter on the Ford 351 Cleveland, Ford's little brother to the big-block.

Ford was unique in that it had two very different big-block engine designs during the height of the muscle car era. The original FE engine design was pioneered in the late 1950s, primarily as a more powerful replacement for the dated Y-block design. What began as a torquey engine meant to move heavyweight sedans morphed into screaming high-performance mill that won Le Mans and drag racing championships throughout the 1960s.

By the late 1960s, the FE design was dated, so Ford replaced it with the 385 series in displacements of 429 and 460 ci, which was similar to the canted-valve Cleveland design being pioneered at the same time. It didn't share the FE pedigree of racing success, mostly due to timing, but the new design was better in almost every way; it exists via Ford Motorsports' offerings to this day.

Beginning in 1971, the 429 found its way between the fenders of Mustangs and Torinos in high-compression 4-barrel versions called the Cobra Jet and Super Cobra Jet, and it was one of the most powerful passenger car engines that Ford had ever built. If the muscle car era had not died out shortly after the release of these powerful engines, without a doubt, the 429 performance variants would be ranked with the legendary big-blocks of all time.

If you are planning to rebuild a Ford 429 or 460 engine, are in the process of a rebuild, or just want to learn more about Ford's storied engines, this book is a must-have item for your shelf.

Throughout the violent financial disruptions of the past several years, three men have stood out as beacons of judgment and wisdom: Warren Buffett, George Soros, and Paul Volcker. Though their experiences and styles vary -- Buffett is the canny stock market investor; Soros is the reader of shifting global tides in trade and currencies; and Volcker is the regulator and governor, sheriff and clean-up crew -- they have very much in common.

All three men have more than fifty years of deep involvement in markets. All are skeptical of Wall Street frenzies. They believe that markets tend to be right, but usually only over the medium term. They have seen too many cycles of herd-driven, emotion-riding booms and busts to make their views hostage to the sweeping and simplistic assumptions of efficient-markets models.

With the benefit of his own deep understanding of markets and finance, Morris brilliantly analyzes the records of these men, distilling their wisdom and experience -- and argues for the importance of consistent values in navigating the treacherous terrain of today's globalized world.

Charles R. Morris's The Trillion Dollar Meltdown (2008) was the first book to warn of the impending financial crash in all its horrific scale and speed. Now, with Comeback, Morris reveals that the United States is on the brink of a strong recovery that could last for twenty years or more.

The great economic boom times in American history have come because of fortuitous discoveries. Natural resources (coal first, then oil) fueled vast economic and industrial expansions, which in turn helped create and supply new markets. The last genuine economic game changer was the technology boom of the 1990s, which gave the U.S. a global competitive advantage for a while based on electronics and silicon. One of the first writers and analysts in the U.S. to predict that the tech boom would lead to a period of sustained economic growth was Charles Morris. In defiance of the recessionary times (in 1990), he saw the coming boom. Now, in 2013, he sees the threshold of another.

This time the gift is natural gas. The amount and distribution of gas in American shale is so vast that it has the potential to transform the manufacturing economy, creating jobs across the country, and requiring a new infrastructure that will benefit the nation as a whole. Because of fracking, jobs that once would have been outsourced abroad will return home, America can become a net exporter of energy, and cheap energy will provide the opportunity for innovation and competition.

In light of this new opportunity, and other complementary developments Morris explores in this book, the U.S. ought to be approaching the future with a robust self-confidence it has not experienced in a while. But we could fumble it away. The gold-rush style of shale boom companies does not make them good neighbors. A counter-reaction could put their industry, and the new era of national prosperity, at risk. We also have a political system that has the capacity to spoil the benefits of this huge boon. If the wealth locked in the continental shelf is not shared for the general economic good, but is instead exploited in short-term profiteering, then many of the opportunities that exist will be choked off by a few very rich corporations.

Managing the great bonus of the vast store of cheap energy is going to become a defining political challenge in the years ahead. At the threshold of a thrilling opportunity, Morris is a brilliantly perceptive guide.

Ford expert and veteran drag-racing author Charles R. Morris has written the definitive book covering the members of the Ford Drag Council and Drag Team of the 1960s, perhaps the most important decade in Ford performance history. In writing Ford Drag Team, Morris performed candid, one-on-one interviews with Ford drag racing legends like Phil Bonner, Hubert Platt, Ed Terry, Randy Payne, Al Joniec, the late Bill Lawton, Drag Team captain Dick Brannan, and more. Morris also collected factory documents and race reports and scoured the earth for photos and statistics to document the full story of these drag racing pioneers. Ford Drag Team is your opportunity to get the true story, directly from those who made the history from behind the wheel and behind the scenes. You'll learn how this talented group of individuals from diverse backgrounds came together to make motorsports history that should never be forgotten.