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.

An Evening Standard's Book of the Year 'A tour de force.' David Goodhart All over the West, party systems have shattered and governments have been thrown into turmoil. The embattled establishment claims that these populist insurgencies seek to overthrow liberal democracy. The truth is no less alarming but is more complex: Western democracies are being torn apart by a new class war. In this controversial and groundbreaking analysis, Michael Lind, one of America's leading thinkers, debunks the idea that the insurgencies are primarily the result of bigotry and reveals the real battle lines. He traces how the breakdown of class compromises has left large populations in Western democracies politically adrift. We live in a globalized world that benefits elites in high income 'hubs' while suppressing the economic and social interests of those in more traditional lower-wage 'heartlands'. A bold framework for understanding the world, The New Class War argues that only a fresh class settlement can avert a never-ending cycle of clashes between oligarchs and populists - and save democracy.

In The American Way of Strategy, Lind argues that the goal of U.S. foreign policy has always been the preservation of the American way of life--embodied in civilian government, checks and balances, a commercial economy, and individual freedom. Lind describes how successive American statesmen--from George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton to Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan--have pursued an American way of strategy that minimizes the dangers of empire and anarchy by two means: liberal internationalism and realism. At its best, the American way of strategy is a well-thought-out and practical guide designed to preserve a peaceful and demilitarized world by preventing an international system dominated by imperial and militarist states and its disruption by anarchy. When American leaders have followed this path, they have led our nation from success to success, and when they have deviated from it, the results have been disastrous. Framed in an engaging historical narrative, the book makes an important contribution to contemporary debates. The American Way of Strategy is certain to change the way that Americans understand U.S. foreign policy.

Few biographers and historians have taken Lincoln's ideas seriously or placed him in the context of major intellectual traditions. In "What Lincoln Believed, the most comprehensive study ever written of the thought of America's most revered president, Michael Lind provides a resource to the public philosophy that guided Lincoln as a statesman and shaped the United States.
Although he is often presented as an idealist dedicated to political abstractions, Lincoln was a pragmatic politician with a lifelong interest in science, technology, and economics. Throughout his career he was a disciple of the Kentucky senator Henry Clay, whose "American System" of government support for industrial capitalism Lincoln promoted when he served in the Illinois statehouse, the U.S. Congress, and the White House.
Today Lincoln is remembered for his opposition to slavery and his leadership in guiding the Union to victory in the Civil War. But Lincoln's thinking about these subjects is widely misunderstood. His deep opposition to slavery was rooted in his allegiance to the ideals of the American Revolution. Only late in his life, however, did Lincoln abandon his support for the policy of "colonizing" black Americans abroad, which he derived from Henry Clay and Thomas Jefferson. Lincoln and most of his fellow Republicans opposed the extension of slavery outside of the South because they wanted an all-white West, not a racially integrated society.
Although the Great Emancipator was not the Great Integrationist, he was the Great Democrat. In an age in which many argued that only whites were capable of republican government, Lincoln insisted on the universality of human rights and the potential fordemocracy everywhere. In a century in which liberal and democratic revolutions against monarchy and dictatorship in Europe and Latin America repeatedly had failed, Lincoln believed that liberal democracy as a form of government was on trial in the American Civil War. "Our popular government has often been called an experiment," Lincoln told the U.S. Congress, insisting that the American people had to prove to the world that "when ballots have fairly, and constitutionally, decided, there can be no successful appeal, back to bullets." If the United States fell apart after the losers in an election took up arms, then people everywhere might conclude that democracy inevitably led to anarchy and "government of the people, by the people, for the people" might well "perish from the earth."
"He loved his country partly because it was his own country, but mostly because it was a free country." What Lincoln said of Henry Clay could be said of him as well. In "What Lincoln Believed, Michael Lind shows the enduring relevance of Lincoln's vision of the United States as a model of liberty and democracy for the world.

In this groundgreaking reinterpretation of America's most disatrous and controversial war, Michael Lind demolishes enduring myths and put the Vietnam War in its proper context -- as part of the global conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. Lind reveals the deep cultural divisions within the United States that made the Cold War consensus so fragile and explains how and why American public support for the war in Indochina declined. Even more stunning is his provacative argument that the United States failed in Vietnam because the military establishment did not adapt to the demands of what before 1968 had been largely a guerrilla war.

In an era when the United States often finds itself embroiled in prolonged and difficult conflicts in places like Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, and Iraq, Lind offers a sobering cautionary tale to Ameicans of all political viewpoints.

Record numbers of Americans describe themselves as “independents” and reject the conventional agendas of Left and Right. In this widely acclaimed book, Ted Halstead and Michael Lind explain why today’s ideologies and institutions are so ill-suited to the Information Age, and offer a groundbreaking blueprint for updating all sectors of America society. Taking on partisans and experts on both sides of the political divide, they propose far-reaching reforms for the way we provide health and retirement security, collect taxes, organize elections, enforce civil rights, and educate our children.

Twice before the United States has dramatically reconfigured itself, shifting from an agrarian to an industrial society after the Civil War and successfully adapting to the massive technological and demographic changes of the early twentieth century during the New Deal era. Uniting a sweeping historical vision with bold policy proposals, The Radical Center shows us how to reinvent our nation once again so that all Americans can reap the benefits of the Information Age.

For nearly a decade, Michael Lind worked closely as a writer and editor with the intellectual leaders of American conservatism. Slowly, he came to believe that the many prominent intellectuals he worked with were not the leaders of the conservative movement but the followers and apologists for an increasingly divisive and reactionary political strategy orchestrated by the Republican party. Lind's disillusionment led to a very public break with his former colleagues on the right, as he attacked the Reverend Pat Robertson for using anti-Semitic sources in his writings.

In "Up From Conservatism," this former rising star of the right reveals what he believes to be the disturbing truth about the hidden economic agenda of the conservative elite. The Republican capture of the U.S. Congress in 1994 did not represent the conversion of the American public to conservative ideology. Rather, it marked the success of the thirty-year-old "southern strategy" begun by Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon. From the Civil War to the civil rights revolution, the southern elite combined a low-wage, low-tax strategy for economic development with a politics of demagogy based on race-baiting and Bible-thumping. Now, Lind maintains, the economic elite that controls the Republican party is following a similar strategy on a national scale, using their power to shift the tax burden from the rich to the middle class while redistributing wealth upward.

To divert attention from their favoritism toward the rich, conservatives play up the "culture war," channeling popular anger about falling real wages and living standards away from Wall Street and focusing it instead on the black poor and nonwhite immigrants.

The United States, Lind concludes, could use a genuine "one-nation" conservatism that seeks to promote the interests of the middle class and the poor as well as the rich. But today's elitist conservatism poses a clear and present danger to the American middle class and the American republic.

Renewing America’s Civic Compact addresses the chief challenges and principal tensions in the operation of our civil society in order to consider possible paths forward. The meritocracy, multiculturalism, issues of race, technology, and populist nationalism in American democracy today are some of the issues that have created more tensions to American public life. Chapters address the condition of civil conversation within the university and across American society. This collection then engages debates over the continued relevance and durability of liberal ideas and institutions; whether we have accessible means and resources to channel digital technology more fruitfully for the sake of human achievement and well-being; and how some have endeavored to revitalize the American civic vocation through both scholarly and practical education. Finally, the volume closes with a call to restore civic friendship, properly understood, as the foundation for renewing America’s civic compact.

Widely reviewed and critically praised, Emmanuel Todd's "After the Empire" predicts that the United States is forfeiting its superpower status as it moves away from traditional democratic values of egalitarianism and universalism, lives far beyond its means economically, and continues to anger foreign allies and enemies alike with its military and ideological policies. As America's global dominance evaporates, Todd foresees the emergence of a Eurasian alliance bringing together Europe, Russia, Japan, and the Arab-Islamic world.

Todd calmly and straightforwardly takes stock of many negative trends, including America's weakened commitment to the socio-economic integration of African Americans, a bulimic economy that increasingly relies on smoke and mirrors and the goodwill of foreign investors, and a foreign policy that squanders the country's reserves of "soft power" while its militaristic arsonist-fireman behavior is met with increasing resistance. Written by a demographer and historian who foresaw the collapse of the Soviet Union, this original and daring book cannot be ignored.

Despite the most meager of formal educations, Lincoln had a tremendous intellectual curiosity that drove him into the circle of Enlightenment philosophy and democratic political ideology. And from these, Lincoln developed a set of political convictions that guided him throughout his life and his presidency. This compilation of ten essays from Lincoln scholar Allen C. Guelzo uncovers the hidden sources of Lincoln's ideas and examines the beliefs that directed his career and brought an end to slavery and the Civil War.

In "The Texas Right: The Radical Roots of Lone Star Conservatism," some of our most accomplished and readable historians push the origins of present-day Texas conservatism back to the decade preceding the twentieth century. They illuminate the initial factors that began moving Texas to the far right, even before the arrival of the New Deal.
By demonstrating that Texas politics foreshadowed the partisan realignment of the erstwhile Solid South, the studies in this book challenge the traditional narrative that emphasizes the right-wing critique of modern America voiced by, among others, radical conservatives of the state's Democratic Party, beginning in the 1930s. As the contributors show, it is impossible to understand the Jeffersonian Democrats of 1936, the Texas Regular movement of 1944, the Dixiecrat Party of 1948, the Shivercrats of the 1950s, state members of the John Birch Society, Texas members of Young Americans for Freedom, Reagan Democrats, and most recently, even, the Tea Party movement without first understanding the underlying impulses that produced their formation.

Michael Lind has been described by "Rolling Stone" magazine as "that rarest of figures: an intellectual with name recognition." Now the Whitehead Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC, Lind has been an editor or staff writer for "The New Yorker," "Harper's Magazine," and "The New Republic" and writes frequently for "The New York Times" and "Financial Times." He is the author of more than a dozen books of history, political journalism, and fiction, including a poetry chapbook, "When You Are Someone Else" (2002); "Bluebonnet Girl" (2004), a children's book in verse that won an Oppenheimer Toy Prize for children's literature; and a narrative poem, "The Alamo" (1997), which the "Los Angeles Times" named as one of the best books of the year. "Parallel Lives" is his first collection of verse.

Lind's themes range from geopolitical issues, interpersonal relationships, art, nature and the American landscape, to the nature of poetry itself. Thomas Disch says of Lind, "To read his spare and elegant poems is to be privy to the councils of the unacknowledged legislators of our own day and age."