The Speculation Economy: How Finance Triumphed over Industry
Author: Lawrence E Mitchell
American businesses today are obsessed with the price of their stock, and no wonder. The consequences of even a modest decrease can be so dire that some executives would rather damage their corporation's long-term health than allow quarterly returns to fall below projections. But how did this situation come about? When did the stock market become the driver of the American economy? Lawrence E. Mitchell identifies the moment in American history when finance triumphed over industry. He shows how the birth of the giant modern corporation spurred the rise of the stock market and how, by the dawn of the 1920s, the stock market left behind its business origins to become the very reason for the creation of business itself.
What People Are Saying
Joel Seligman
"Mitchell highlights two of the most pivotal events in our history of modern finance: the rise of Wall Street and investment banking as a key factor in American capitalism and the federal government's response to the ever more complex role of finance capitalism. Mitchell's writing is graceful, comprehensive, and persuasive that as significant as the story of trusts and the trustbusters has been, the rise of finance capitalism and ultimately its federal coordination through such agencies as the Federal Reserve System and the Securities and Exchange Commission may be even more important."--(Joel Seligman, President, University of Rochester and author, the Transformation of Wall Street)
Harvey J. Goldschmid
"Lawrence Mitchell's new work is full of fresh insight about the rise of what he calls 'American corporate capitalism.' Anyone interested in the development of our modern financial markets will be richly rewarded by a careful reading."--(Harvey J. Goldschmid, Dwight Professor of Law, Columbia University, former Member, United States Securities and Exchange Commission)
Stephen M. Bainbridge
"Professor Mitchell's provocative thesis is that the development of the modern American public corporation was not an organic process but rather occurred almost overnight at an identifiable point in time and as a result of identifiable political and economic forces. This important new work helps us understand the forces that continue to shape the dominant form of economic actor of our time."--(Stephen M. Bainbridge, William D. Warren Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law)
Charlie Cray
"An impressive work of legal, economic and historical scholarship that will enrich today's debate over corporate accountability and regulatory policy."--(Charlie Cray, director of the Center for Corporate Policy and co-author of The People's Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy)
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WALTER WHITE: THE DILEMMA OF BLACK IDENTITY IN AME
Author: Thomas Dyja
"Thomas Dyja's fascinating and compelling biography of Walter White takes us into the personal and political world of this fair-skinned, blond and blue-eyed, brash and impulsive, stylish and complex man. His story is about one of the few individuals in American history who devoted himself completely to the concept of a color-blind nation, yet lost the delicate balance between ambition and advocacy that had been his trademark." In restoring Walter White to his place in the story of the African-American struggle, Thomas Dyja fills the void between Booker T. Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He also confronts some of the thorniest issues between blacks and whites in America.
Publishers Weekly
Once known as "Mr. NAACP," Walter White and his contributions to African-American history have been lost in the margins of memory. Dyja (The Moon in Our Hands) offers a straightforward biography of the light-skinned, blue-eyed, blond-haired black man who served as executive secretary of the NAACP for the "complex and pivotal decades" from 1931 to 1955. White's daring made him an unparalleled investigator into the horrendous violence and systematic peonage that characterized the decades before WWII. His accomplishments were history making: desegregation of the armed forces owes a debt to his investigations into the treatment of black soldiers in Europe and the Pacific; the Legal Defense Fund owes much to White's focus on litigation. Usefully but often controversially, this "man of few theories and many tactics, remained squarely, sanely and consistently down the middle for almost four decades" and kept the NAACP along that same path. As in White's life, the NAACP holds the center, but Dyja attends to White's place as a writer of the Harlem Renaissance and to his more intimate life, including his "last act"-White's marriage to a white woman that, according to the author, "cost him his place in history." (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Kirkus Reviews
Compact, insightful biography seeks to restore the historical importance of the energetic, light-skinned NAACP secretary whose leadership laid the groundwork for the civil-rights movement. As a result of forced sexual relations on both sides of his family, Walter White (1893-1955) was only 5/32nds black. Some historians have seen the blue-eyed, blond-haired activist as "a freak of nature who somehow used his fair skin to deceive both white and black America," writes Dyja (The Moon in Our Hands, 2005, etc.). The author portrays White as a witty, ambitious man who had the courage and passion to challenge Jim Crow segregationist laws. Raised black but able to pass for white, he used this as a tool when he joined the NAACP in 1918 to investigate the growing number of lynchings in the South. Risking his own life numerous times, he lured lynchers into proudly confessing murder and torture to a man they thought was white. He wrote articles and gave incendiary talks to highlight his findings, using the mass media to gradually turn Americans against lynching. In New York, White was an early member of the Harlem Renaissance, though his literary success was limited; he wrote an anti-lynching novel (Fire in the Flint, 1924) and encouraged other writers to portray African-American life in all its complexity. He became secretary of the NAACP in 1931 and incessantly championed civil rights, making the cover of Time in 1938. He effectively blocked the Supreme Court nomination of John Parker, who supported black disenfranchisement; his relentless pressure resulted in Truman's landmark 1948 executive orders ending discrimination in federal employment and requiring equal opportunity in the armed forces. Hiscrowning legacy was the 1954 Supreme Court ruling on Brown v. Board of Education, which desegregated schooling. White's 1949 marriage to a white woman gave ammunition to critics who diminished his role in African-American history by saying he never believed he was black, but Dyja successfully shows that he transcended narrow definitions of race and worked for humanity. Able tribute to a boundary-smashing activist.
What People Are Saying
Manfred Berg
"Walter White, the longtime executive secretary of the NAACP, is one of the most complex and yet fascinating characters of the black freedom struggle. While many historians have dismissed White as an opportunistic self-promoter, Thomas Dyja's elegantly written biography provides the reader with an empathetic and judicious portrait of a man who was passionately devoted to the cause of racial advancement but as an individual aspired to move beyond the limitations of race."--(Manfred Berg, author of The Ticket to Freedom)
Ted Widmer
"Thomas Dyja's gripping biography of Walter White has restored an essential American life. With impeccable research, acute sensitivity and literary grace, Dyja has restored one of the most important links in the long chain of events and causes that brought Americans, at long last, into the the bright sunshine of civil and human rights."--(Ted Widmer, author of Ark of the Liberties)
Kenneth Robert Janken
"In prose that moves effortlessly across the page, Thomas Dyja captures the energy and accomplishments of Walter White, one of the most important and effective African American leaders of the last century."--(Kenneth Robert Janken, author of Walter White: Mr. NAACP)
Devin Fergus
"Dyjas's crisply-written biography is a fascinating, concise history of arguably the most effective civil rights leader of his time. Dyjas's timely and nimble effort identifies the gap between one person's proximity to power and a community's failure to ever actualize it--a dilemma that continues to plague civil rights leaders and by extension black America today. As the inaugural text for this new series, Walter White is an auspicious beginning for The Library of African American Biography, which will crucially introduce and familiarize future generations of readers to the most important people of the African American experience."--(Devin Fergus, author of Liberalism, Black Power, and the Making of American Politics, 1965-1980)
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