Capitalizing on Change
A Social History of American Business
Published on 1. March 2009
556 pages
978-0-8078-8980-0 (ISBN)
Description
Americans love “this year’s model,” relying on the “new” to be always “improved.” Enthusiasm for the new, says Stanley Buder, is essential to American business, where innovation and change stoke the engines of economic energy. To really understand the history of business in America, he argues, we must understand the intertwining dynamics of social and business values.
In a history spanning over three hundred years, Buder examines the enveloping expansion of the market economy, the laggardly use of government to modify or control market forces, the rise of consumerism, the shifting role of small business, and much more. He concludes with the explosive development of business in the 1990s and its aftermath of crises and scandals. Along the way, he analyzes the ways American social values foster an entrepreneurial ethos and why the identification of change with progress provides a distinctive and provocative theme in American life.
Buder studies American business as not only an engine of wealth accumulation but also an important generator and reflector of American values. Capitalizing on Change is the first full-length business history in recent years to make this relationship clear.
In a history spanning over three hundred years, Buder examines the enveloping expansion of the market economy, the laggardly use of government to modify or control market forces, the rise of consumerism, the shifting role of small business, and much more. He concludes with the explosive development of business in the 1990s and its aftermath of crises and scandals. Along the way, he analyzes the ways American social values foster an entrepreneurial ethos and why the identification of change with progress provides a distinctive and provocative theme in American life.
Buder studies American business as not only an engine of wealth accumulation but also an important generator and reflector of American values. Capitalizing on Change is the first full-length business history in recent years to make this relationship clear.
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Person
Stanley Buder is professor emeritus of history at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is author of Pullman: An Experiment in Industrial Order and Community Planning and Visionaries and Planners: The Garden City Movement and the Modern Community.
Content
- Intro
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- PART ONE. FOUNDATIONS OF A MODERN ECONOMY
- 1 Early Capitalism and the Rise of a Market Economy
- 2 North America's Colonial Economy
- 3 The Early National Economy, 1776-1820
- 4 Antebellum America, 1820-1860
- 5 The Unstoppable Engine
- 6 Entrepreneurial Leaves from the Gilded Age
- 7 A Changing Workplace and Society
- PART TWO. FROM THEODORE ROOSEVELT TO REAGAN
- 8 Washington Comes Forward, 1900-1912
- 9 The Age of Organization
- 10 The Consumer Decade
- 11 Hard Times, 1933-1945
- 12 The American (Quarter) Century, 1945-1973
- PART THREE. THE TURN OF THE MILLENNIUM
- 13 Coping with Decline, 1974-1980
- 14 Restructuring and Rebirth, 1980s
- 15 The New Economy, the Burst Bubble, and an Economy in Trouble, 1990-2008
- 16 The Rise of a Global Economy
- 17 Thinking Small
- 18 The Twenty-First Century
- Notes
- Index
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- R
- S
- T
- U
- V
- W
- Y
