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Taming the Octopus
- The Long Battle for the Soul of the Corporation
- Narrated by: Jon Vertullo
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
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- How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism
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- The Dream and Delusion That Conquered America
- By: Benjamin C. Waterhouse
- Narrated by: Stephen Bowlby
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Overall
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Performance
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What makes the dream of self-employment so alluring, so pervasive in today's world? Benjamin C. Waterhouse offers a provocative argument: the modern cult of the hustle is a direct consequence of economic failures—bad jobs, stagnant wages, and inequality—since the 1970s. With original research, Waterhouse traces a new narrative history of business in America, populated with vivid characters—from the activists, academics, and work-from-home gurus who hailed business ownership as our economic salvation to the upstarts who took the plunge. Some flourish; some squeak by. Some fail.
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- On the Cultural Roots of America's Political Crisis
- By: James Davison Hunter
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
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Overall
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Performance
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- How the Pursuit of Profit Benefits All
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Unlock the power of shareholder capitalism -- a system that transcends zero-sum games and Wall Street stereotypes. In its essence, shareholder capitalism enables mutually beneficial trade, a concept ingrained in our human history for over 300,000 years. This approach fosters specialization, fuels innovation, and propels economic growth.
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Farnsworth’s Classical English Rhetoric
- By: Ward Farnsworth
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- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Masters of language can turn unassuming words into phrases that are beautiful, effective, and memorable. What are the secrets of this alchemy? Part of the answer lies in rhetorical figures: practical ways of applying great aesthetic principles to a simple sentence or paragraph. Farnsworth’s Classical English Rhetoric recovers this knowledge for our times. It amounts to a tutorial on eloquence conducted by Churchill and Lincoln, Dickens and Melville, Burke and Paine, and more than a hundred others.
Publisher's Summary
The untold story of how efforts to hold big business accountable changed American capitalism.
In this vivid and surprising history, we meet twentieth-century activists, investors, executives, and workers who fought over a simple question: Is the role of the corporation to deliver profits to shareholders, or something more? On one side were "business statesmen" who believed corporate largess could solve social problems. On the other were libertarian intellectuals such as Milton Friedman and his oft-forgotten contemporary, Henry Manne, whose theories justified the ruthless tactics of a growing class of corporate raiders. But Kyle Edward Williams reveals that before the "activist investor" emerged as a capitalist archetype, Civil Rights groups used a similar playbook for different ends, buying shares to change a company from within.
As a rising tide of activists pushed corporations to account for societal harms from napalm to environmental pollution to inequitable hiring, a new idea emerged: that managers could maximize value for society while still turning a maximal profit. This elusive ideal, "stakeholder capitalism," still dominates our headlines today. Williams's necessary history equips us to reconsider democracy's tangled relationship with capitalism.