The Price of Civilization_ Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity - Jeffrey D. Sachs [115]
To all of you, I am grateful for your confidence in my ideas, while of course absolving you from association with those with which you take issue. To the readers, I thank you in advance for the joys of dialogue and collegiality that you have consistently shown me in the ongoing lives of The End of Poverty, Common Wealth, and my other books and articles.
FURTHER READINGS
One of the great joys in writing this book was the opportunity to read and savor dozens of major volumes and hundreds of academic papers on topics ranging from moral philosophy, to political economy, to modern American history, to neurophysiology. The book’s hundreds of endnotes and list of references will help steer the reader through the massive amount of scholarly writing on the topics addressed in this book. Since there is so much material, I think it is also useful to offer some suggestions to readers on a more limited and focused journey through the literature.
The following describes some of the key books that I found to be most important as I pondered the complex landscape of American political economy. This is not a representative sample of books, nor a comprehensive account of heated debates, but rather a personal view of many of the high points of analysis. These are books that made a deep impression on me as I tried to sort out fact from opinion and truth from propaganda. I’ve grouped the books into major categories, though there are inevitable overlaps across these fields, as I hope the text makes patently clear.
Modern American Political History
The events detailed in the book really start in the 1960s, at the apogee of activist government, the era of Kennedy’s New Frontier and Johnson’s War on Poverty. The Liberal Hour, by G. Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot, offers a wonderful narrative of that era. The end of activist government is treated in many places. One excellent book is Chain Reaction, by Thomas Edsall and Mary Edsall, which describes how the civil rights era, and the realignments it created, led from the Kennedy-Johnson 1960s to the Reagan 1980s. Another superb book describing how the 1970s were a political bridge between the liberal 1960s and conservative 1980s is Pivotal Decade by Judith Stein. Sean Wilentz thoroughly and cogently describes the Reagan years and their long legacy through 2008 in The Age of Reagan.
There has perhaps been no more consistent and able chronicler of America’s descent into a modern Gilded Age than Kevin Phillips. Since Phillips first accurately proclaimed The Emerging Republican Majority in 1969, he has chronicled the rise of modern finance-based capitalism in America, and its debilitating effects on politics and society. Phillips’s tomes on the new Gilded Age include Arrogant Capital (1994), Wealth and Democracy (2002), and Bad Money (2008).
The Economics of Happiness
After a long lapse in the serious study of economic well-being, economists have finally begun to take happiness seriously again as an area of research. Two exemplary recent texts in this new field are Richard Layard’s Happiness: Lessons from a New Science and Carol Graham’s The Pursuit of Happiness. They build on a veritable outpouring of hundreds of scholarly articles in academic journals. Another powerful book that challenges the assumed links between consumer goods and well-being is Avner Offer’s The Challenge of Affluence: Self-Control and Well-Being in the United States and Britain Since 1950.
The Neuroscience and Psychology of Happiness
Of course, economists are not alone in trying to understand the links between consumerism and well-being. Indeed, they are late to the table. Psychologists and neuroscientists have been at it for decades, and in recent years have been making breakthroughs with powerful new tools such as brain scans. Fascinating recent accounts of these psychological and neuroscientific