A bold plan for the United States to regain the lead in infrastructure development through privatization and public-private partnerships

America's infrastructure-its essential roads, bridges, ports, airports, power grids, and telecommunications systems-were once the pride of the nation and an example for the world. But now, after years of neglect and oversight, this infrastructure is crumbling and causing catastrophic changes in the US quality of life. Build seeks to explain how American infrastructure collapsed and what can be done to repair it.

In a series of colorful, rarely told cases, Build takes readers on a revealing tour behind the scenes of the successes and debacles of key infrastructure projects to show what works, why the United States has failed in recent decades to invest in infrastructure, and how the private sector can help revitalize the sector, spur job growth, and contribute to climate resilience.

Sadek Wahba examines the private origins of US infrastructure and the federally funded megaprojects that came after the New Deal, investigating the role the private sector can and should play in building infrastructure. By drawing comparisons with systems in the United Kingdom, France, India, and China, Wahba shows that while privatization and public-private partnerships cannot solve all infrastructure challenges, they are essential for closing funding gaps, overcoming political paralysis, and driving major infrastructure advances.

Build will appeal to readers interested in public finance, domestic policy, the role of the federal government, tax policy, and urban affairs.

WILLA Literary Award Finalist in Creative Nonfiction
Finalist, Evans Handcart Award

In the middle of the Great Depression, Montana native Julia Bennett arrived in New York City with no money and an audacious business plan: to identify and visit easterners who could afford to spend their summers at her brand new dude ranch near Ennis, Montana. Julia, a big-game hunter whom friends described as a clever shot with both rifle and shotgun, flouted gender conventions to build guest ranches in Montana and Arizona that attracted world-renowned entertainers and artists.

Bennett's entrepreneurship, however, was not a new family development. During the Civil War, her widowed grandmother and her seven-year-old daughter--Bennett's mother--set out from Missouri on a ten-month journey with little more than a yoke of oxen, a covered wagon, and the clothes on their backs. They faced countless heartbreaks and obstacles as they struggled to build a new life in the Montana Territory.

Burning the Breeze is the story of three generations of women and their intrepid efforts to succeed in the American West. Excerpts from diaries, letters, and scrapbooks, along with rare family photos, help bring their vibrant personalities to life.

The great Nokia turnaround--universal business lessons for leaders in any industry


Nokia once dominated the smartphone industry. It was to mobile phones was Kleenex is to facial tissues. Then iPhones and Androids appeared out of nowhere and pushed Nokia off the cliff. In just four years, the company lost over 90 percent of its value. Revenues were in freefall; massive layoffs became common. Pundits predicted that bankruptcy wasn't a matter of if, it was a matter of when.


Then something equally shocking occurred. In record time, Nokia bounced back. With a vengeance. Nokia reinvented itself and is now the second-biggest player in the $100 billion-dollar global wireless market.


In Transforming Nokia, the man who orchestrated and led Nokia's comeback--Chairman of the Board Risto Siilasmaa--reveals the story of Nokia's fall and resurrection. He reveals the inside story of the collapse and provides survival strategies and change-management methods any business leader can take to the bank. You'll learn how to harness the power of what Siilasmaa calls paranoid optimism and apply his winning entrepreneurial leadership model to rise above any challenge and drive sustainable success.


Whether you lead a team or a corporate division, head a start-up or a massive organization, and whether your business is on the rocks or running smoothly, Transforming Nokia provides everything you need to sharpen your foresight, expand your options, seize opportunities, and thrive, no matter what changes tomorrow brings.

Founded in 1917, Paramount Records incongruously was one of several homegrown record labels of a Wisconsin chair-making company. The company pinned no outsized hopes on Paramount. Its founders knew nothing of the music business, and they had arrived at the scheme of producing records only to drive sales of the expensive phonograph cabinets they had recently begun manufacturing.

Lacking the resources and the interest to compete for top talent, Paramount's earliest recordings gained little foothold with the listening public. On the threshold of bankruptcy, the label embarked on a new business plan: selling the music of Black artists to Black audiences. It was a wildly successful move, with Paramount eventually garnering many of the biggest-selling titles in the race records era. Inadvertently, the label accomplished what others could not, making blues, jazz, and folk music performed by Black artists a popular and profitable genre. Paramount featured a deep roster of legendary performers, including Louis Armstrong, Charley Patton, Ethel Waters, Son House, Fletcher Henderson, Skip James, Alberta Hunter, Blind Blake, King Oliver, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Ma Rainey, Johnny Dodds, Papa Charlie Jackson, and Jelly Roll Morton.

Scott Blackwood's The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records is the story of happenstance. But it is also a tale about the sheer force of the Great Migration and the legacy of the music etched into the shellacked grooves of a 78 rpm record. With Paramount Records, Black America found its voice. Through creative nonfiction, Blackwood brings to life the gifted artists and record producers who used Paramount to revolutionize American music. Felled by the Great Depression, the label stopped recording in 1932, leaving a legacy of sound pressed into cheap 78s that is among the most treasured and influential in American history.

In this era of financial crisis compounded, and even perhaps enabled, by a dearth of investigative reporting, it is valuable to go back in time to learn from the work of great journalists with the courage to have taken on avaricious corporations and irresponsible business practices. Perhaps no book demands our attention and respect as much as the one now in your hands. The unabridged edition, long out of print, of Ida Tarbell's study/expose of the history of the Standard Oil Company is an American classic, a model of careful research, detailed analysis, clear expository writing, and social mission. It has been hailed as one of the top ten of journalism's greatest hits. In Volume I, Tarbell explores: - the birth of the oil industry - the rise of the Standard Oil Company - the oil war of 1872 - the beginnings of the oil trust - the first interstate commerce bill - and more. IDA MINERVA TARBELL (1857-1944) is remembered today as a muckraking journalist, thanks to this 1904 blockbuster expos . Originally published as a series of articles in McClure's magazine, this groundbreaking work highlighted the dangers of business monopolies and contributed to the eventual breakup of Standard Oil. As modern-day muckraker Danny Schechter writes in his new introduction, exclusive to this Cosimo Classics edition. He is editor of Mediachannel.org and author of numerous books on the media, including Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal (Cosimo).

This clear-eyed, highly pragmatic call for embracing digital flexibility as foundational to business models strikes an ideal balance between forward-thinking boldness and breakdowns of established best practices. . . . Unbundling the Enterprise stands out for its practical clarity, especially when it comes to facing the certainty of uncertainty.
--Publisher's Weekly Booklife, Editor's Pick

Unbundling the Enterprise provides a blueprint for organizations to remain relevant and maximize growth in the digital economy by embracing the flexibility and optionality enabled by APIs.

Drawing on real-world examples of both innovative digital pirates and legacy digital settlers, authors Stephen Fishman and Matt McLarty articulate strategies to unbundle business capabilities into reusable digital assets. These building blocks can then be rapidly combined and recombined to capitalize on new opportunities and innovations as they emerge.

For business and technology leaders, Unbundling the Enterprise provides an actionable methodology to engineer happy accidents and sustainable success in turbulent times. Underpinning their strategy are techniques tailored for digital business, like using APIs to create widespread optionality, designing digital business models focused on value exchange, and optimizing outcomes through tight feedback loops.

More than copying the superficial traits of digital pioneers, this book reveals the deeper mindset shift required to continually capitalize on unanticipated opportunities enabled by rapid technology innovation.

Unbundling the Enterprise...blew me away. It is a combination of some of my favorite books: Dr. Carliss Baldwin's Design Rules and Eric Evans's Domain Driven Design with the strategic insights akin to Good to Great and Reengineering the Corporation.

--Gene Kim, researcher and bestselling author of The Phoenix Project and Wiring the Winning Organization

The story of the RCA VideoDisc is a rare inside look at a company and the way it conducts the complex process of science-based innovation. The author examines how RCA shaped a sophisticated consumer electronics technology in a research and development effort that spanned fifteen years. We see how the company's history, its structure, its technical capability, and its competition all influenced the choices that were made in moving VideoDisc from laboratory to development group to market, and ultimately to withdrawal from the marketplace. Published in hardcover as RCA and the VideoDisc.

My Years with General Motors became an instant bestseller when it was first published in 1963. It has since been used as a manual for managers, offering personal glimpses into the practice of the discipline of management by the man who perfected it. This is the story no other businessman could tell--a distillation of half a century of intimate leadership experience with a giant industry and an inside look at dramatic events and creative business management.

Only a handful of business books have reached the status of a classic, having withstood the test of over fifty years' time. Even today, Bill Gates praises My Years with General Motors as the best book to read on business, and Business Week has named it the number one choice for its bookshelf of indispensable reading.

IDA MINERVA TARBELL (1857-1944) is remembered today as a muckraking journalist, thanks to this 1904 blockbuster expos . Originally published as a series of articles in *McClure's* magazine, this groundbreaking work highlighted the dangers of business monopolies and contributed to the eventual breakup of Standard Oil. In this era of financial crisis compounded, and even perhaps enabled, by a dearth of investigative reporting, it is valuable to go back in time to learn from the work of great journalists with the courage to have taken on avaricious corporations and irresponsible business practices. Perhaps no book demands our attention and respect as much as the one now in your hands. The unabridged edition, long out of print, of Ida Tarbell's study/expose of the history of the Standard Oil Company is an American classic, a model of careful research, detailed analysis, clear expository writing, and social mission. It has been hailed as one of the top ten of journalism's greatest hits. In Volume II, Tarbell explores: - battles over oil pipelines - the marketing of oil - the political response to Standard's domination - breaking up the oil trust - competition in the oil industry - and more. Investigative journalist DANNY SCHECHTER is editor of Mediachannel.org and author of numerous books on the media, including *Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal* (Cosimo). For more, see www.newsdissector.com/plunder. He writes in his new introduction, exclusive to this Cosimo Classics edition:

From the author of Dividing Western Waters comes a book on the development of the arid West--in particular the development of Arizona--as seen through the experiences of three generations of John Ruddle Nortons of Arizona. From the administration of Teddy Roosevelt and the earliest reclamation acts to the monumental case between California and Arizona that would determine how the life-giving waters of the Colorado River would be divided, the Nortons were at the center of Arizona's development into a vital population and agricultural center. Pioneers like the Nortons shaped the very landscape of the western United States--a region that would help to supply the United States with cotton, vegetables, and livestock throughout World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. The Norton Trilogy follows the lives of John R. Norton (1854-1923) and the beginnings of Arizona farming; John R. Norton, Jr. (1901-1987) and his expansions into diverse crops; and John R. Norton III (1929-present) and the shaping of modern agribusiness as it responded to new water irrigation policies.

As the author points out, Several themes run through The Norton Trilogy: the most important is the interplay between human values and the waterscape. Technology, of course, played a monumental role in this drama, for dynamite, bulldozers, and reinforced concrete impacted the region's water and shaped the agricultural economy more than any Indian's digging stick. Another theme is the central role played by government--local, state, regional, and national--in shaping water policies. The biographical profiles of each John Norton addressed in this work reveal much about the history of Arizona and the central role that the quest for water has played in the growth and development of the region.

Although the book focuses largely on the state of Arizona, and specifically on one Arizonan family, the story is a template of the hardworking American ideal. Senator John Kyl, a colleague of John Norton III, writes in the foreword, The Nortons, who never suffered from lack of a work ethic, have made Arizona and the nation a better place. This book is as much an American story as it is an Arizona one. Readers everywhere will be captivated by the generation-to-generation struggles of a family business and how these failures and successes are affected by interstate politics and public policy.

Advertised as a new standard for living, the Lustron Home was introduced in 1948 in response to the urgent need for housing for veterans returning from World War II and their rapidly growing families. These enameled steel, prefabricated houses became very popular, and were heavily promoted from 1948 to 1950. Approximately 2,500 went up all over the United States and even South America.

This work chronicles the history of the Lustron Corporation--how it got started and why it failed. The architectural differences between the six basic models of the Lustron Home, and how they could be built in as little as two days, are fully described. Also included is a listing that documents the location, model, color and various other particulars of the roughly 2,500 houses completed.

At one time, Wyoming provided most of the ties for the nation's railroads. Knights of the Broadax, the Story of the Wyoming Tie Hack, recalls the period beginning in 1914 when strong men, mostly Scandinavians, were carving railroad crossties out of the upper Wind River mountains. Their only tools were their own brute strength, a crosscut saw, a broadax and a double-bitted ax. A good Hack could cut as many as 50 ties a day, with most destined for the Chicago and North Western Railroad.

Set against the breathtaking beauty of northwestern Wyoming, this story in words and more than 180 photos, takes the reader back to a way of life lived in near isolation, with only the company town owned the Wyoming Tie & Timber Company.

By the early 1930s mechanization began to influence the business as 3-man mobile sawmills became available, though the cut trees were still skidded out by teams of horses. Then the advent of World War II created a new dilemma: an increased demand for ties and fewer men to cut them, as many were called in service to their country. As a solution, the company secured a contingent of German prisoners of war and put them to work on the 1945 drive.

Over ten million hand cut ties were snaked out of those woods over the years by the Company--brought out by flume and stream to be floated 100 miles down the Wind River to Riverton each summer in a magnificent drive before further mechanization finally signaled the end of the era in 1946.

The Tie Hacks who created the legend are long gone, but their memory has been perpetuated in a 14-foot-limestone monument that stands on a lonely knoll overlooking the site of the first Tie Camp. This is their story.

Most great figures in American history reveal great contradictions, and Henry Ford is no exception. He championed his workers, offering unprecedented wages, yet crushed their attempts to organize. Virulently anti-Semitic, he never employed fewer than 3,000 Jews. An outspoken pacifist, he made millions producing war materials. He urbanized the modern world, and then tried to drag it back into a romanticized rural past he'd helped to destroy.

As the American auto industry struggles to reinvent itself, Vincent Curcio's timely biography offers a wealth of new insight into the man who started it all. Henry Ford not only founded Ford Motor Company but institutionalized assembly line production and, some would argue, created the American middle class. By constantly improving his product and increasing sales, Ford was able to lower the price of the automobile until it became a universal commodity. He paid his workers so well that, for the first time in history, the people who manufactured a complex industrial product could own one. This was Fordism--social engineering on a vast scale. But, as Curcio displays, Ford's anti-Semitism would forever stain his reputation. Hitler admired him greatly, both for his anti-Semitism and his autocratic leadership, displaying Ford's picture in his bedroom and keeping a copy of Ford's My Life and Work by his bedside. Nevertheless, Ford's economic and social initiatives, as well as his deft handling of his public image, kept his popularity high among Americans. He offered good pay, good benefits, English language classes, and employment for those who struggled to find jobs--handicapped, African-American, and female workers. Such was his popularity that in 1923, the homespun, clean-living, xenophobic Henry Ford nearly won the Republican presidential nomination.

This new volume in the Lives and Legacies series explores the full impact of Ford's indisputable greatness, the deep flaws that complicate his legacy, and what he means for our own time.

TRaditionally, mini grids have been viewed as off-grid+? systems that are built and operated solely for communities without electricity. The reality, however, is that millions of people in Sub-Saharan Africa and India who are connected to the main grid suffer from poor grid reliability (weak grid+?), sometimes with a power supply of less than 4 to 8 hours daily and with frequent disputes over the accuracy of billing. As a backstop, these poorly served customers often find themselves forced to rely on small fossil fuel+powered generators that are noisy, polluting, and expensive to operate.

Mini Grid Solutions for Underserved Customers: New Insights from Nigeria and India explores another option: undergrid mini grids. These are mostly solar hybrid+powered mini grids built and operated by private companies in areas already connected with the main electricity grid but facing poor technical and commercial service. This comprehensive book examines how undergrid mini grids can create win-win-win outcomes for retail customers, distribution enterprises, and mini grid developers. Drawing on extensive discussions with pioneering developers, the book showcases detailed case studies from Nigeria and India, shedding light on the challenges and opportunities of interconnected and non-interconnected undergrid mini grids.

The authors address technical issues of grid interconnection and delve into the policy and regulatory considerations crucial for the financial sustainability and success of undergrid mini grids. The book is an invaluable resource for policy makers, energy practitioners, and researchers seeking practical insights to bridge the electricity access gap, empower communities with reliable and affordable electricity, and drive environmentally and commercially sustainable development.

- The report is rich with insight, not least because the authors have been able to contrast the Nigeria and India approaches taken by the respective private sectors in each country. The five case studies are very valuable. The authors have powerfully illustrated the importance of the policy and regulatory framework and how that translates into investor behavior.+?

- Mohua Mukherjee, Senior Research Fellow, Oxford Institute of Energy Studies

- This great report represents a pivotal turning point in the history of energy and has global implications for the role of mini grids for communities that have been poorly served by main grid utilities.+?

- Peter Lilienthal, Founder HOMER Energy

- This is a tremendous addition to the literature on mini grids and an important guide for all of us practitioners working in this area.+?

- James Sherwood, Director of Research & Innovation, RMI Global South Program

- This refreshingly honest and open report provides an excellent overview of interconnected and isolated mini grids, as well as a thorough analysis of key ground-level implementation issues in regulation, business, and engineering.+?

- Joanis Holzigel, Chief Operating Officer, INENSUS

The automobile and Soviet communism made an odd couple. The quintessential symbol of American economic might and consumerism never achieved iconic status as an engine of Communist progress, in part because it posed an awkward challenge to some basic assumptions of Soviet ideology and practice. In this rich and often witty book, Lewis H. Siegelbaum recounts the life of the Soviet automobile and in the process gives us a fresh perspective on the history and fate of the USSR itself.

Based on sources ranging from official state archives to cartoons, car-enthusiast magazines, and popular films, Cars for Comrades takes us from the construction of the huge Soviet Detroits, emblems of the utopian phase of Soviet planning, to present-day Togliatti, where the fate of Russia's last auto plant hangs in the balance. The large role played by American businessmen and engineers in the checkered history of Soviet automobile manufacture is one of the book's surprises, and the author points up the ironic parallels between the Soviet story and the decline of the American Detroit. In the interwar years, automobile clubs, car magazines, and the popularity of rally races were signs of a nascent Soviet car culture, its growth slowed by the policies of the Stalinist state and by Russia's intractable roadlessness. In the postwar years cars appeared with greater frequency in songs, movies, novels, and in propaganda that promised to do better than car-crazy America.

Ultimately, Siegelbaum shows, the automobile epitomized and exacerbated the contradictions between what Soviet communism encouraged and what it provided. To need a car was a mark of support for industrial goals; to want a car for its own sake was something else entirely. Because Soviet cars were both hard to get and chronically unreliable, and such items as gasoline and spare parts so scarce, owning and maintaining them enmeshed citizens in networks of private, semi-illegal, and ideologically heterodox practices that the state was helpless to combat. Deeply researched and engagingly told, this masterful and entertaining biography of the Soviet automobile provides a new perspective on one of the twentieth century's most iconic--and important--technologies and a novel approach to understanding the history of the Soviet Union itself.

Are you ready for the IoT revolution? The Internet of Things (IoT) will soon be everywhere--embedded in interconnected devices we'll use every day, and this book documents the shifts now under way.

Cars, appliances, and wearables already transmit real-time data to improve performance, and new IoT products can even save your life. Consumer goods are just the tip of the iceberg. Amid projections that 30 billion smart devices will be linked soon, traditional companies such as Siemens, GE, and John Deere are preparing for profound changes to management, strategy, manufacturing, and maintenance.

With the IoT, for example, sensors warn when a critical assembly-line part is about to break, or track how customers actually use products. Data hubs collect and share information instantly with departments, supply chains, partners, and customers-- anchoring the organization and replacing hierarchies with circular systems.

Written by a leading IoT strategist, The Future is Smart explains how companies are tapping technology to:

• Optimize supply chains
• Maximize quality
• Boost safety
• Increase efficiency
• Reduce waste
• Cut costs
• Revolutionize product design
• Delight customers

For those who are ready, the opportunities are endless. This big-think book reveals concrete actions for thriving in this new tech-enabled world.

This book is an in-depth look at how to strategize, evaluate, and approach the wildly exciting world of digital procurement. More than any other enterprise function, procurement has grown from back-office cost control to strategic business partner. Today's procurement practitioners are at the forefront of innovation, sustainability, and social responsibility, making change by directing where and how enterprises spend their money. The transformation has been spurred by the billions of dollars invested in digital procurement solutions, which is fundamentally changing the traditional ways of operating.

Within these pages you'll find a blueprint for approaching the complexity of procurement and making smart technology investments. You'll also become acquainted with the significant organizational implications of digital done well, and with success measures, watch-outs, and innovations in the offing. Taken together, a strong digital procurement capability will enable businesses to not only be prepared, but to thrive when confronted with tomorrow's disruption.

At Kearney, we are dedicated to creating opportunities for a more sustainable world. As part of this mission, we recommend purchasing Trade wars, pandemics, and chaos in its e-book format wherever possible.

Journalist Ida Tarbell wrote her exposé of the monopolistic practices of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company as a serialized work in McClure's Magazine before the appearance of the first book edition of 1904. The breakup of Standard Oil in 1911 into thirty-four baby Standards can be attributed in large part to Tarbell's masterly investigative reporting, often labeled as muckraking. Ida Tarbell's childhood experiences were the inspiration behind the book. Her father, Franklin Tarbell, worked for Standard Oil and lived through what Ida called hate, suspicion, and fear that engulfed the community.

As a direct witness to the schemes and horizontal integration of John D. Rockefeller and his associates, Tarbell began building the foundations of The History of the Standard Oil Company early with growing senses of interest and discontent. After taking a job at McClure's Magazine, Tarbell uncovered a key piece of evidence proving that Standard Oil was rigging railroad prices and preying on its competition. Public outcry erupted at the conclusion of Tarbell's 19-part expose of Standard Oil published in McClure's, eventually resulting in the expedited breakup of Standard Oil in 1911.

These reactions are immortalized in political cartoons utilizing imagery of Rockefeller's hidden agendas being demolished by investigative journalism and muckraking. Several journal and newspaper reviewers addressed The History of Standard Oil Company by praising its calmness in the face of hatred, focus on facts, and genuine exposure of the effects that greed can have on businessmen seeking success.

A 1904 editorial review from The New York Times relayed the highlights of the volumes to the public, noting the diplomatic tendencies of Tarbell within her work - still widely respectful of the achievements of John D. Rockefeller but critical of Standard Oil's business strategies that were unfair and of questionable legality.

Though Standard Oil Company accrued more cumulative value after it was broken up, the exposure of what Tarbell described as immoral and illegal business became a striking symbol of the power of the press. As such, The History of Standard Oil Company harbors great significance as a standard-bearer of modern investigative journalism.

How corporate denial harms our world and continues to threaten our future.

Corporations faced with proof that they are hurting people or the planet have a long history of denying evidence, blaming victims, complaining of witch hunts, attacking their critics' motives, and otherwise rationalizing their harmful activities. Denial campaigns have let corporations continue dangerous practices that cause widespread suffering, death, and environmental destruction. And, by undermining social trust in science and government, corporate denial has made it harder for our democracy to function.

Barbara Freese, an environmental attorney, confronted corporate denial years ago when cross-examining coal industry witnesses who were disputing the science of climate change. She set out to discover how far from reality corporate denial had led society in the past and what damage it had done.

Her resulting, deeply-researched book is an epic tour through eight campaigns of denial waged by industries defending the slave trade, radium consumption, unsafe cars, leaded gasoline, ozone-destroying chemicals, tobacco, the investment products that caused the financial crisis, and the fossil fuels destabilizing our climate. Some of the denials are appalling (slave ships are festive). Some are absurd (nicotine is not addictive). Some are dangerously comforting (natural systems prevent ozone depletion). Together they reveal much about the group dynamics of delusion and deception.

Industrial-Strength Denial delves into the larger social dramas surrounding these denials, including how people outside the industries fought back using evidence and the tools of democracy. It also explores what it is about the corporation itself that reliably promotes such denial, drawing on psychological research into how cognition and morality are altered by tribalism, power, conflict, anonymity, social norms, market ideology, and of course, money. Industrial-Strength Denial warns that the corporate form gives people tremendous power to inadvertently cause harm while making it especially hard for them to recognize and feel responsible for that harm.

From Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris, and Cornelius Vanderbilt to Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, and Bill Gates, with Madam C.J. Walker, Martha Stewart, Jay-Z, and many more in-between, An Illustrated Business History of the United States is a sweeping, lively, and highly approachable history of American business from the nation's founding to the twenty-first century.

Author Richard Vague divides this history into fourteen eras, with each era featuring lists of the wealthiest individuals, notable inventions, and companies founded, and the largest organizations, banks, and insurance companies. Much of the data to create these lists stems from original research, and the book contains a wealth of primary business information extended and supplemented on a companion website.

Major themes include the nation's business beginnings in land and real estate, the pivotal place of financial institutions from the nation's earliest days, America's emergence as an industrial powerhouse, its outsized innovations, the dominance of its railways, automobiles, and other transportation companies, and the ever-changing role of government. As the book moves to the contemporary era, it highlights the merchandising of comfort, entertainment, and controversy, and looks to the future as it touches on the potential of emerging industries such as genetic engineering, green energy, and virtual reality.

A must read for any student of American history, the book covers both catastrophe and triumph, innovation and failure, and provides a crucial context for a better understanding of the nation's political and social history. Lushly illustrated with 300 color images, it is equally rewarding for those who want to read it cover to cover and those who prefer to focus on select eras of special interest.