Martha's Vineyard became an integral part of the whaling industry at the beginning of the eighteenth century and inspired a lasting romantic enthusiasm for life on the open ocean. From shore whaling to daring voyages into the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans, the insular whaling community offered a tempting path for many young Vineyarders to rise from cabin boy to captain. Local businesses were enticed by the potential profit from whaling voyages,...

Albert O. Hirschman (1915-2012) was one of the leading intellectuals of the twentieth century, renowned for his contributions to economics, the social sciences, and the history of ideas. He is the author of many books, including the influential Exit, Voice, and Loyalty and The Strategy of Economic Development. In this volume, Albert Hirschman reconstructs the intellectual climate of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to illuminate the intricate...

A catastrophic depression engulfed Colorado in 1893. The government's decision to adopt the gold standard and stop buying silver hit the mining industry like a cave-in. Unemployment reached 90 percent in Leadville, a city built on silver. Strikes by union miners in Cripple Creek and Leadville led to destruction and death. Political parties split along battle lines of gold versus silver. By 1898, the country had begun to recover, but silver mining...

Founded in 1642 as Great Harbor, Edgartown is the oldest of Martha's Vineyard's six townships. It has been a shire town and a center of learning, a whaling port and a fishing village, a manufacturing center and a mecca for sportsmen. Its gleaming captain's houses and majestic public buildings are a testament to the wealth that whaling brought to the island in the mid-1800s, but the end of New England whaling was far from the end of its story. Faced...

At midcentury, two federal urban renewal projects in the gritty, blue-collar navy town of Portsmouth decimated two neighborhoods. But in the 1970s and '80s-thanks to an influx of artisans, chefs and entrepreneurs-the Port City emerged as a beacon of arts, culinary excellence and preservation. Iconoclast Jay Smith opened the Press Room, the celebrated music club. A group of concerned citizens saved the Music Hall, the last of Portsmouth's vaudeville...

Contemporary capitalism is always evolving. From digital technologies to cryptocurrencies, current trends in political economy are much discussed, but often little understood. So where can we turn for clarity? As Michael Roberts and Guglielmo Carchedi argue, new trends don't necessarily call for new theory. In “Capitalism in the 21st Century”, the authors show how Marx's law of value explains numerous issues in our modern world. In both advanced...

Recent movements such as the Tea Party and anti-tax "constitutional conservatism" lay claim to the finance and taxation ideas of America's founders, but how much do we really know about the dramatic clashes over finance and economics that marked the founding of America? Dissenting from both right-wing claims and certain liberal preconceptions, Founding Finance brings to life the violent conflicts over economics, class, and finance that played directly,...

"Winner of the 2013 Spear's Book Award in Financial History" "Co-Winner of the 2014 Bronze Medal in Economics, Axiom Business Book Awards" "One of The Motley Fool's (John Reeves) 10 Great Books on American Economic History 2014" "One of Financial Times (FT.com) Best History Books of 2013" "One of Bloomberg News' Top Business Books of 2013" "One of Kirkus Reviews' Best Nonfiction Books of the Year for 2013 in Business and Economics" "One of Bloomberg/Businessweek...

Pulitzer Prize winner Hedrick Smith’s new book is an extraordinary achievement, an eye-opening account of how, over the past four decades, the American Dream has been dismantled and we became two Americas.   In his bestselling --   This book is essential reading for all of us who want to understand America today, or why average Americans are struggling to keep afloat. Smith reveals how pivotal laws and policies were altered while the...