Random House Books for Young Readers Capitalism in America: An Economic History of the United States

This book is very informative. Sources are not the best and I get the impression the author is pro-capitalist. However, the author let's you draw your own conclusion. Book came in great condition. Amazon sent it and another book together with protection around it and boxed. Thank you Amazon.

At first, I was disappointed and was about to leave three to four stars here, as I expected a more cerebral read. It's not an advanced-degree book, yet my opinion of it was improving from chapter to chapter, as displaying economic history on fast forward turned out to possess own charm. In the end, it is a story about (very) good times and (very) bad times, and how the Americans as a nation lived through them, with a moderate Republican twist. You will like it if you are a person of deed looking for bedtime consolation in a world that puts ideology and wishful thinking before truisms like living up to the means and improving labor productivity. I will definitely keep it in my library for occasional flip-throughs

Insightful and briefly explained history of capitalism by Alan Greenspan (The AG)

Chairman Greenspan wrote many intriguing pieces for Ayn Rand. This book is nowhere near that level. Perhaps too much time spent in the corridors of power, but this is just pat and nowhere near the intereting thinker of his youth. In particular, a clear willingness to say what is expected made this book a great disappointment.

The authors set three main themes that need to be remembered while reading the book.• Productivity: under the conception described by the authors it is the society’s ability to get more output from a given input (they say this is a Technical economic issue).• Creative Destruction: they use this concept as defined by Schumpeter and describe it as the process that drives productivity growth (this is an economic issue that also touches on some of most profound problems of social philosophy)• Politics: it deals with the fallout of creative destruction (This one takes us far from the world of charts and numbers into the world of practical politics)These three themes are throughout the whole book and the authors put a lot of effort to link all the stories and facts to one of these themes which helps the readers understand more about what they are trying to explain.The book is pretty much a romantic version of a summary of the history of the United States, from its independence to the present (2018) It's clear to me that the authors are somehow proud of what America has become and, even though at the end they explain how the economy of the country has declined and they try to give some explanation to it.It's just a <500 pages story about how America has become to what it is now, and bring up some data that compare America against Europe and mainly the UK which is the one that gave birth to it.Here the authors explain the key decisions in America's history that led them into a world, as they describe it, of innovation, freedom, a place where creativity is well rewarded. They explain how the immigrants had a huge impact in how the main cities were build.They talk about how the geographical, historical moment of America's beginnings made it perfect for a country to start, the social and political context allowed the construction of a new and better community, a new and better government.It is worth saying that by the extension of the book they will lack of a lot of things, important things such as social and even economic issues that were encountered throughout the history of America which are persistent now a days. <500 pages aren't enough to discus all this. But still the book isn't about it, is it. The economic perspective that it gives which is how capitalism (along with the three themes described at the beginning) are seen and were the driving force of economic growth of an economy that was in simple words very young to the point of becoming the main economy of the world, and as they describe it, the most successful economy in history.Whether I agree or not with the book (completely or partially) that is not relevant from my perspective, but let me say that this is a good book for those that aren't too deep into economics or history. If you are really deep into this and you are in search of new perspectives and ideas… well this might not be for you.I give it five stars because despite not being what most expected, is a good book, a little repetitive in the first 100 pages but still.