Introduction -- The Power of the Illusion, the Way We Never Were -- The Dream Interrupted, Insecurity Among the Middle-Aged -- Privileged Expectations and Insecure Realities -- The Myth of Equal Opportunity -- Negotiating Uncertainty -- Economic Vulnerability as the New Normal.

The new gilded age -- Escalating economic inequality -- Interpreting inequality -- Economic inequality as a political issue -- Inequality and American democracy -- The partisan political economy -- Partisan patterns of income growth -- A partisan coincidence? -- Partisan differences in...