In November 2020, The New York Times asked fifteen on its columnists to 'explain what the past four years have cost America.' Not one of the columnists focused on President Trump's racism. This book seeks to redress this imbalance and bring Black Americans' role in our economy to the forefront....

Slavery and the Civil War -- Reconstruction -- The Gilded Age and Jim Crow laws -- The Great Migration, Depression and world wars -- Postwar prosperity and the civil rights movement -- A new Gilded Age and mass incarceration -- Racism rises and America declines.

Introduction: Imagining a Confederate economy -- Shifting cultivation, slavery, and economic development -- Agricultural reform and state activism -- Explaining Lieber's paradox : railroads, state building, and slavery -- Redefining free trade to modernize the South -- Economic nationalism and...

1607-1775: The early Colonial period -- 1776-1860: The Revolutionary period to the Antebellum era -- 1861-1914: The Civil War, reconstruction, and the Gilded Age -- 1915-1945: World War I to World War II -- 1946-1991: Post-World War II America -- 1992-2018: Post-Cold War and the twenty-first...