Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States

Michael Lind

Apr 2012 · Harper Collins

About this ebook

Michael Lind’s Land of Promise is "[an] ambitious economic history of the United States . . . rich with details" (New York Times Book Review).

How did a weak collection of former British colonies become an industrial, financial, and military colossus?

From the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries, the American economy has been transformed by wave after wave of emerging technology: the steam engine, electricity, the internal combustion engine, computer technology. Yet technology-driven change leads to growing misalignment between an innovative economy and anachronistic legal and political structures until the gap is closed by the modernization of America's institutions—often amid upheavals such as the Civil War and Reconstruction and the Great Depression and World War II.

When the U.S. economy has flourished, government and business, labor and universities, have worked together in a never-ending project of economic nation building. As the United States struggles to emerge from the Great Recession, Michael Lind clearly demonstrates that Americans, since the earliest days of the republic, have reinvented the American economy—and have the power to do so again.

Ratings and reviews

Maybe I would give it 5 stars if I could have Mr Lind address some seeming inconsistencies in his argument for me. Besides that, I found the historical reach, breadth, and analysis to be transformative and invaluable.

About the author

Michael Lind is cofounder of the New America Foundation and policy director of its Economic Growth Program. His first three books of political journalism and history—The Next American Nation, Up from Conservatism, and Vietnam: The Necessary War—were all New York Times Notable Books. He writes frequently for the New York Times, Financial Times, and Salon.