One of TIME magazine's All-TIME 100 Best Nonfiction Books
One of Times Literary Supplement's 100 Most Influential Books Since the War
One of National Review's 100 Best Nonfiction Books of the Century
​One of Intercollegiate Studies Institute's 50 Best Books of the 20th Century

How can we benefit from the promise of government while avoiding the threat it poses to individual freedom? In this classic book, Milton Friedman provides the definitive statement of an immensely influential economic philosophy--one in which competitive capitalism serves as both a device for achieving economic freedom and a necessary condition for political freedom.
​
First published in 1962, Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom is one of the most significant works of economic theory ever written. Enduring in its eminence and esteem, it has sold nearly a million copies in English, has been translated into eighteen languages, and continues to inform economic thinking and policymaking around the world. This new edition includes prefaces written by Friedman for both the 1982 and 2002 reissues of the book, as well as a new foreword by Binyamin Appelbaum, lead economics writer for the New York Times editorial board.

In an honest and freewheeling conversation with New York Times best-selling author Steve Fiffer, Jenevein recounts the story of his two-decade attempt to work fairly, forthrightly, and faithfully with his Chinese counterparts, his travels via jumbo jets, puddle jumpers, jeeps, and camels, his elation over sealing a groundbreaking deal designed to bring success to everyone, and his disappointment-and disbelief-over being betrayed by his Chinese partners, who had also become friends. Equally important, he reflects on the current state of US-China relations and offers a roadmap for the critical coming years.

In his twenties, Jenevein accidentally fell into the energy business in Texas; in his thirties he serendipitously fell into the energy business in China; and in his forties, he pivoted from building power plants and wind farms to manufacturing wind turbine blades. Within five-plus years, that joint venture with China's state-controlled aviation and military behemoth AVIC was valued at $1.8 billion.

Buoyed by their success, the partners set their sights on the burgeoning wind farm markets in the US, Europe, and South America. When his Chinese partners breached the new venture's contract, Jenevein sought an amicable resolution, but the Communists played by their own rules. In harrowing detail, he relates how they not only refused to settle the dispute but also threatened him and his family.

These tribulations led to a trial with issues that eventually worked their way up to the US Supreme Court. Jenevein painstakingly recreates the prickly David v Goliath proceedings that led to a rare instance in which a US company prevailed against a state-controlled Chinese entity...and actually collected on the judgment.

Jenevein is currently persona non grata in China. But thanks to his unique understanding of that nation's culture, politics, and business, he has built a successful strategic consulting firm whose clients include the US government agencies and numerous multinational corporations. In a thoughtful coda to this cautionary tale, the old China hand shares his thoughts about how to deal with the dragon today and in the future. Educating ourselves about the world's only other superpower is essential, he says. Both entertaining and eye-opening, Dancing with the Dragon is an excellent primer for doing just that.

A Fortune best nonfiction book of 2023

In a revelatory dispatch from the frontier of capitalist extremism, an acclaimed historian of ideas shows how free marketeers are realizing their ultimate goal: an end to nation-states and the constraints of democracy.

Look at a map of the world and you'll see a colorful checkerboard of nation-states. But this is not where power actually resides. Over the last decade, globalization has shattered the map into different legal spaces: free ports, tax havens, special economic zones. With the new spaces, ultracapitalists have started to believe that it is possible to escape the bonds of democratic government and oversight altogether.

Crack-Up Capitalism follows the most notorious radical libertarians--from Milton Friedman to Peter Thiel--around the globe as they search for the perfect space for capitalism. Historian Quinn Slobodian leads us from Hong Kong in the 1970s to South Africa in the late days of apartheid, from the neo-Confederate South to the former frontier of the American West, from the medieval City of London to the gold vaults of right-wing billionaires, and finally into the world's oceans and war zones, charting the relentless quest for a blank slate where market competition is unfettered by democracy.

A masterful work of economic and intellectual history, Crack-Up Capitalism offers both a new way of looking at the world and a new vision of coming threats. Full of rich details and provocative analysis, Crack-Up Capitalism offers an alarming view of a possible future.

In an honest and freewheeling conversation with New York Times best-selling author Steve Fiffer, Jenevein recounts the story of his two-decade attempt to work fairly, forthrightly, and faithfully with his Chinese counterparts, his travels via jumbo jets, puddle jumpers, jeeps, and camels, his elation over sealing a groundbreaking deal designed to bring success to everyone, and his disappointment-and disbelief-over being betrayed by his Chinese partners, who had also become friends. Equally important, he reflects on the current state of US-China relations and offers a roadmap for the critical coming years.

In his twenties, Jenevein accidentally fell into the energy business in Texas; in his thirties he serendipitously fell into the energy business in China; and in his forties, he pivoted from building power plants and wind farms to manufacturing wind turbine blades. Within five-plus years, that joint venture with China's state-controlled aviation and military behemoth AVIC was valued at $1.8 billion.

Buoyed by their success, the partners set their sights on the burgeoning wind farm markets in the US, Europe, and South America. When his Chinese partners breached the new venture's contract, Jenevein sought an amicable resolution, but the Communists played by their own rules. In harrowing detail, he relates how they not only refused to settle the dispute but also threatened him and his family.

These tribulations led to a trial with issues that eventually worked their way up to the US Supreme Court. Jenevein painstakingly recreates the prickly David v Goliath proceedings that led to a rare instance in which a US company prevailed against a state-controlled Chinese entity...and actually collected on the judgment.

Jenevein is currently persona non grata in China. But thanks to his unique understanding of that nation's culture, politics, and business, he has built a successful strategic consulting firm whose clients include the US government agencies and numerous multinational corporations. In a thoughtful coda to this cautionary tale, the old China hand shares his thoughts about how to deal with the dragon today and in the future. Educating ourselves about the world's only other superpower is essential, he says. Both entertaining and eye-opening, Dancing with the Dragon is an excellent primer for doing just that.

A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection

In Talking to My Daughter About the Economy, activist Yanis Varoufakis, Greece's former finance minister and the author of the international bestseller Adults in the Room, pens a series of letters to his young daughter, educating her about the business, politics, and corruption of world economics.

Yanis Varoufakis has appeared before heads of nations, assemblies of experts, and countless students around the world. Now, he faces his most important--and difficult--audience yet. Using clear language and vivid examples, Varoufakis offers a series of letters to his young daughter about the economy: how it operates, where it came from, how it benefits some while impoverishing others. Taking bankers and politicians to task, he explains the historical origins of inequality among and within nations, questions the pervasive notion that everything has its price, and shows why economic instability is a chronic risk. Finally, he discusses the inability of market-driven policies to address the rapidly declining health of the planet his daughter's generation stands to inherit.

Throughout, Varoufakis wears his expertise lightly. He writes as a parent whose aim is to instruct his daughter on the fundamental questions of our age--and through that knowledge, to equip her against the failures and obfuscations of our current system and point the way toward a more democratic alternative.

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
A powerful and persuasive discussion about economics, freedom, and the relationship between the two, from today's brightest economist.
In this classic discussion, Milton and Rose Friedman explain how our freedom has been eroded and our affluence undermined through the explosion of laws, regulations, agencies, and spending in Washington. This important analysis reveals what has gone wrong in America in the past and what is necessary for our economic health to flourish.

Publishers Weekly's Top 10 Spring 2024
Amazon's Best History Book of the Month for February 2024

This groundbreaking book tracks the massive wealth amassed from slavery from pre-Civil War to today, showing how our modern economy was built on the backs of enslaved Black people--and lays out a clear argument for reparations that shows exactly what was stolen, who stole it, and to whom it is owed.

In this timely, powerful, investigative history, The Stolen Wealth of Slavery, Emmy Award-nominated journalist David Montero follows the trail of the massive wealth amassed by Northern corporations throughout America's history of enslavement. It has long been maintained by many that the North wasn't complicit in the horrors of slavery. The truth, however, is that large Northern banks--including well-known institutions like Citibank, Bank of New York, and Bank of America--were critical to the financing of slavery; that they saw their fortunes rise dramatically from their involvement in the business of enslavement; and that white business leaders and their surrounding communities created enormous wealth from the enslavement and abuse of Black bodies.

The Stolen Wealth of Slavery grapples with facts that will be a revelation to many: Most white Southern enslavers were not rich--many were barely making ends meet--with Northern businesses benefitting the most from bondage-based profits. And some of the very Northerners who would be considered pro-Union during the Civil War were in fact anti-abolition, seeing the institution of slavery as being in their best financial interests, and only supporting the Union once they realized doing so would be good for business. It is a myth that the wealth generated from slavery vanished after the war. Rather, it helped finance the industrialization of the country, and became part of the bedrock of the growth of modern corporations, helping to transform America into a global economic behemoth.

In this remarkable book, Montero elegantly and meticulously details rampant Northern investment in slavery. He showcases exactly what was stolen, who stole it, and to whom it is owed, calling for corporate reparations as he details contemporary movements to hold companies accountable for past atrocities.

An exposé of how society pays for corporations' free lunch and the cost of environmental damage, low wages, systemic discrimination, and cheap goods.

In an age when business leaders solemnly profess dedication to principles of environmental and social justice, Christopher Marquis's provocative investigation into the real costs of doing business reveals the way that leaders of the corporate world gaslight to evade responsibilities by privatizing profits and socializing costs. Who pays? for the resulting climate and environmental damage, racism, low wages, and cheap goods: the average citizen and the taxpayer.

By bringing to light ideas that today are on the fringe but rapidly making their way into the mainstream, Marquis outlines a new regenerative paradigm for business in society. He tells of a group of pioneers trying to not just reform but transform the way business is conducted all over the world. By taking novel actions to reimagine business operations in responsible ways, minimize their negative impacts, and create new ways for business to properly absorb their hidden costs, these leaders provide blueprints to move the needle on vexing social and environmental issues.

What's in it for leaders of the corporate world? The model of reform presented provides clear guidance on how to get ahead of the curve as an emerging economic order is formed. No business can lead from the front if it is morally-backward looking. History has shown time and again that those who get out in front of emerging changes in our social and environmental landscape protect themselves from inevitable eclipse.

New York Times Bestseller

New York Times reporter and Corner Office columnist David Gelles reveals legendary GE CEO Jack Welch to be the root of all that's wrong with capitalism today and offers advice on how we might right those wrongs.

In 1981, Jack Welch took over General Electric and quickly rose to fame as the first celebrity CEO. He golfed with presidents, mingled with movie stars, and was idolized for growing GE into the most valuable company in the world. But Welch's achievements didn't stem from some greater intelligence or business prowess. Rather, they were the result of a sustained effort to push GE's stock price ever higher, often at the expense of workers, consumers, and innovation. In this captivating, revelatory book, David Gelles argues that Welch single-handedly ushered in a new, cutthroat era of American capitalism that continues to this day.

Gelles chronicles Welch's campaign to vaporize hundreds of thousands of jobs in a bid to boost profits, eviscerating the country's manufacturing base, and destabilizing the middle class. Welch's obsession with downsizing--he eliminated 10% of employees every year--fundamentally altered GE and inspired generations of imitators who have employed his strategies at other companies around the globe. In his day, Welch was corporate America's leading proponent of mergers and acquisitions, using deals to gobble up competitors and giving rise to an economy that is more concentrated and less dynamic. And Welch pioneered the dark arts of financialization, transforming GE from an admired industrial manufacturer into what was effectively an unregulated bank. The finance business was hugely profitable in the short term and helped Welch keep GE's stock price ticking up. But ultimately, financialization undermined GE and dozens of other Fortune 500 companies.

Gelles shows how Welch's celebrated emphasis on increasing shareholder value by any means necessary (layoffs, outsourcing, offshoring, acquisitions, and buybacks, to name but a few tactics) became the norm in American business generally. He demonstrates how that approach has led to the greatest socioeconomic inequality since the Great Depression and harmed many of the very companies that have embraced it. And he shows how a generation of Welch acolytes radically transformed companies like Boeing, Home Depot, Kraft Heinz, and more. Finally, Gelles chronicles the change that is now afoot in corporate America, highlighting companies and leaders who have abandoned Welchism and are proving that it is still possible to excel in the business world without destroying livelihoods, gutting communities, and spurning regulation.

This book is based on the lecture series on finance capitalism Michael Hudson presented for the Global University for Sustainability. The book explains why the U.S. and other Western economies have lost their former momentum: A narrow rentier class has gained control and become the new central planner, using its power to drain income from increasingly indebted and high-cost labor and industry. The American disease of de-industrialization has resulted from the costs of industrial production being inflated by the economic rents extracted by this class under the system of financialized monopoly capitalism that now prevails throughout the West.

The book explains why the U.S.-China conflict cannot simply be regarded as market competition between two industrial rivals. It is a broader conflict between different political economic systems - not only between capitalism and socialism as such, but between the logic of an industrial economy and that of a financialized rentier economy increasingly dependent on foreign subsidy and exploitation as its own domestic economy shrivels. Professor Hudson endeavors to revive classical political economy in order to reverse the neoclassical counter-revolution.

Distressing headlines warn of foreign cyber attacks that could threaten water, health care, power grids, and more. Cell phone and internet services are more vulnerable than we might suspect.

In this book, Emergency Preparedness and Off-Grid Communication, best-selling author Praying Medic offers his approach to prepping and using alternate forms of communication during a disruptive crisis. With the United States moving closer to war and government agencies warning of power grid attacks and other threats, it makes sense for every household to plan for a potentially extended loss of power, internet, and phone services.

This book discusses storing food and water, securing your home, developing a bug-out plan, emergency first aid, personal hygiene during a crisis, backup power options, home security, self-defense, surviving nuclear war, living under martial law, and protecting your family against the worst consequences of an economic collapse. There's even a chapter about how to navigate without GPS.

On top of all those crucial topics, this book is packed with information about emergency communication. More than a dozen chapters explain in detail the options for communicating when cellular and internet services are unavailable and the power grid is down. And, of course, Praying Medic offers ideas on building faith now for the potentially challenging times ahead.

Topics Covered:

Shortwave radio

Satellite communication

Two-way radios that do not require a license

Meshtastic and low-power, long-range (LoRa) radio

Building and testing antennas

Digital radio communication

AREDN mesh networking

Communication security

Amateur radio

GMRS radio

Encryption

If you want to communicate with friends and family during a grid-down event, this book is the roadmap you've been looking for.

In this compelling history, Peter Chapman shows how the United Fruit Company took bananas from the jungles of Costa Rica to the halls of power in Washington, D.C., with not just clever marketing, but covert CIA operations, bloody coups and brutalised workforces. And how along the way they turned the banana into a blueprint for a new model of unfettered global capitalism: one that serves corporate power at any cost.

A call to action for the creative class and labor movement to rally against the power of Big Tech and Big Media

Corporate concentration has breached the stratosphere, as have corporate profits. An ever-expanding constellation of industries are now monopolies (where sellers have excessive power over buyers) or monopsonies (where buyers hold the whip hand over sellers)--or both.

In Chokepoint Capitalism, scholar Rebecca Giblin and writer and activist Cory Doctorow argue we're in a new era of chokepoint capitalism, with exploitative businesses creating insurmountable barriers to competition that enable them to capture value that should rightfully go to others. All workers are weakened by this, but the problem is especially well-illustrated by the plight of creative workers. From Amazon's use of digital rights management and bundling to radically change the economics of book publishing, to Google and Facebook's siphoning away of ad revenues from news media, and the Big Three record labels' use of inordinately long contracts to up their own margins at the cost of artists, chokepoints are everywhere.

By analyzing book publishing and news, live music and music streaming, screenwriting, radio and more, Giblin and Doctorow deftly show how powerful corporations construct anti-competitive flywheels designed to lock in users and suppliers, make their markets hostile to new entrants, and then force workers and suppliers to accept unfairly low prices.

In the book's second half, Giblin and Doctorow then explain how to batter through those chokepoints, with tools ranging from transparency rights to collective action and ownership, radical interoperability, contract terminations, job guarantees, and minimum wages for creative work.

Chokepoint Capitalism is a call to workers of all sectors to unite to help smash these chokepoints and take back the power and profit that's being heisted away--before it's too late.

As seen on Oprah's Super Soul Sunday

The bestselling book, now with a new preface by the authors

At once a bold defense and reimagining of capitalism and a blueprint for a new system for doing business, Conscious Capitalism is for anyone hoping to build a more cooperative, humane, and positive future.

Whole Foods Market cofounder John Mackey and professor and Conscious Capitalism, Inc. cofounder Raj Sisodia argue that both business and capitalism are inherently good, and they use some of today's best-known and most successful companies to illustrate their point. From Southwest Airlines, UPS, and Tata to Costco, Panera, Google, the Container Store, and Amazon, today's organizations are creating value for all stakeholders--including customers, employees, suppliers, investors, society, and the environment.

Read this book and you'll better understand how four specific tenets--higher purpose, stakeholder integration, conscious leadership, and conscious culture and management--can help build strong businesses, move capitalism closer to its highest potential, and foster a more positive environment for all of us.

A renowned economist argues for the importance of property rights in the most intelligent book yet written about the current challenge of establishing capitalism in the developing world (Economist)

The hour of capitalism's greatest triumph, writes Hernando de Soto, is, in the eyes of four-fifths of humanity, its hour of crisis. In The Mystery of Capital, the world-famous Peruvian economist takes up one of the most pressing questions the world faces today: Why do some countries succeed at capitalism while others fail?
In strong opposition to the popular view that success is determined by cultural differences, de Soto finds that it actually has everything to do with the legal structure of property and property rights. Every developed nation in the world at one time went through the transformation from predominantly extralegal property arrangements, such as squatting on large estates, to a formal, unified legal property system. In the West we've forgotten that creating this system is what allowed people everywhere to leverage property into wealth. This persuasive book revolutionized our understanding of capital and points the way to a major transformation of the world economy.

A powerful analysis of how the bias towards wealth that is woven into the very fabric of American capitalism is damaging people, the economy, and the planet, and what the foundations of a new economy could be.

This bold manifesto exposes seven myths underlying wealth supremacy, the bias that institutionalizes infinite extraction of wealth by and for the wealthy, and is the hidden force behind economic injustice, the climate crisis, and so many other problems of our day:

• The Myth of Maximizing: No amount of wealth is ever enough.
• The Myth of Fiduciary Duty: Corporate managers' most sacred duty is to expand capital.
• The Myth of Corporate Governance: Corporate membership must be reserved for capital alone.
• The Myth of the Income Statement: Income to capital must always be increased, while income to labor must always be decreased.
• The Myth of Materiality: Profit--material gain--alone is real, while social and environmental damages are not.
• The Myth of Takings: The first duty of government must be the protection of private property.
• The Myth of the Free Market: There should be no limits on the field of action of corporations and capital.

Kelly argues instead for the democratization of ownership: public ownership of vital services, worker-owned businesses, and more. And she sketches the outlines of a non-extractive capitalism that would be subordinate to the public interest. This is an ambitious reimagining of the very foundations of our economy and society.

In this anthology, Mises offers an articulate and accessible introduction to and critique of two topics he considers especially important: inflation and government interventionism. Mises believes inflation, that is monetary expansion, is destructive; it destroys savings and investment, which are the basis for production and prosperity. Government controls and economic planning never accomplish what their proponents intend. Mises consistently argues that the solution to government intervention is free markets and free enterprise, which call for reforming government. For that, ideas must be changed to let the market system work. There is no better planning for freedom than this.

The seventeen essays in Planning for Freedom: Let the Market System Work are tied together by one overarching idea, best expressed by Mises in the capstone essay Profit and Loss. The essays in the final section of the book summarize Mises's contributions to economic thought and emphasize his firm belief in the power of ideas.

Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) was the leading spokesman of the Austrian School of economics throughout most of the twentieth century.

Bettina Bien Greaves is a former resident scholar and trustee of the Foundation for Economic Education and was a senior staff member at FEE from 1951 to 1999.

A rigorous defense of free markets and open enterprise in the tradition of Adam Smith.

During the 20th century, Vietnam and Poland were both victims not only of devastating wars, but also of socialist planned economies that destroyed whatever war hadn't already. In 1990, Vietnam was still one of the poorest countries in the world, while Poland was one of the poorest in Europe. But in the three decades since then, both countries have drastically improved their citizens' standards of living and escaped the vicious cycle of national poverty.

In this book Rainer Zitelmann identifies the reasons behind the sensational growth of both nations' economies, drawing out the lessons that other countries can learn from these two success stories. To explain the source of their success, he returns to Adam Smith's 1776 treatise, The Wealth of Nations: the only way to overcome poverty is through economic growth, Smith wrote, and economic freedom is the crucial prerequisite from such growth.

Developments over the past 250 years have proved Smith right. The market economy has led to a global decline in poverty unparalleled in human history. Compare this to the fifty years of development aid in Africa that have only entrenched the status quo, and it is clear which approach yields superior results. Despite these strides, almost ten percent of the world's population still lives in extreme poverty. So, what measures actually help to alleviate poverty today? Through a wealth of data and stories from the everyday lives of Polish and Vietnamese people who experienced reforms, Zitelmann demonstrates the persistent relevance of Smith's ideas to economic flourishing in the 21st century.

The Communist Manifesto of 1848-the blueprint for modern totalitarian government-promises utopia but delivers dictatorship, poverty and misery everywhere its tried. Yet many of the tenets of this ideology endure among leftist thinkers, despite repeated and universal failure. The question is why? In A Capitalist Manifesto, Gary Wolfram answers that question with a clear explanation of the only economic system compatible with individual liberty, social justice and freedom: Capitalism. From barter to free markets, Wolfram explains the nature of money, the creation of wealth and the brilliance of a system based not on the state but rather on millions of unique individuals deciding what is best.

A call to action for the creative class and labor movement to rally against the power of Big Tech and Big Media

Corporate concentration has breached the stratosphere, as have corporate profits. An ever-expanding constellation of industries are now monopolies (where sellers have excessive power over buyers) or monopsonies (where buyers hold the whip hand over sellers)--or both.

In Chokepoint Capitalism, scholar Rebecca Giblin and writer and activist Cory Doctorow argue we're in a new era of chokepoint capitalism, with exploitative businesses creating insurmountable barriers to competition that enable them to capture value that should rightfully go to others. All workers are weakened by this, but the problem is especially well-illustrated by the plight of creative workers. From Amazon's use of digital rights management and bundling to radically change the economics of book publishing, to Google and Facebook's siphoning away of ad revenues from news media, and the Big Three record labels' use of inordinately long contracts to up their own margins at the cost of artists, chokepoints are everywhere.

By analyzing book publishing and news, live music and music streaming, screenwriting, radio and more, Giblin and Doctorow deftly show how powerful corporations construct anti-competitive flywheels designed to lock in users and suppliers, make their markets hostile to new entrants, and then force workers and suppliers to accept unfairly low prices.

In the book's second half, Giblin and Doctorow then explain how to batter through those chokepoints, with tools ranging from transparency rights to collective action and ownership, radical interoperability, contract terminations, job guarantees, and minimum wages for creative work.

Chokepoint Capitalism is a call to workers of all sectors to unite to help smash these chokepoints and take back the power and profit that's being heisted away--before it's too late.