Books like Invisible Hands by Kim Phillips-Fein

Adam Smith’s seminal 1776 treatise that laid the groundwork for modern economic theory, presented here in a reprint of Edwin Cannan’s 1904 edition with a new preface by economist George J. Stigler.

Michelle Alexander argues that mass incarceration has become a contemporary system of racial control, striking disproportionately at African‑American men and other disadvantaged groups while perpetuating a new form of Jim Crow.

Shoshana Zuboff explains how digital data is turned into a new market form—surveillance capitalism—where corporations predict and shape behavior for profit, reshaping power, privacy, and democracy in the digital age.

Hannah Arendt’s seminal study charts the rise of totalitarianism from 19th‑century anti‑Semitism and European colonialism to the emergence of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, examining propaganda, terror, and mass mobilization.

Jane Mayer investigates how a network of wealthy right‑wing ideologues, led by figures like the Kochs and the Scaifes, pours billions into the U.S. political system to shape policy and expand economic inequality.

A comprehensive history of the conservative movement in the 1960s through the lens of Barry Goldwater, a presidential candidate who challenged the status quo.

Andrew J. Bacevich examines how American exceptionalism and a growing military influence have shaped the United States’ tense relations with the world.

Drawing on a wide array of sources--including tabloid journalism, popular fiction, movies, and television shows--Philip Jenkins argues that a remarkable confluence of panics, scares, and a few genuine threats created a climate of fear that led to the conservative reaction. He identifies 1975 to 1986 as the watershed years. During this time, he says, there was a sharp increase in perceived threats to our security at home and abroad. At home, America seemed to be threatened by monstrous criminals--serial killers, child abusers, Satanic cults, and predatory drug dealers, to name just a few. On the international scene, we were confronted by the Soviet Union and its evil empire, by OPEC with its stranglehold on global oil, by the Ayatollahs who made hostages of our diplomats in Iran. Increasingly, these dangers began to be described in terms of moral evil. Rejecting the radicalism of the '60s, which many saw as the source of the crisis, Americans adopted a more pessimistic interpretation of human behavior, which harked back to much older themes in American culture. This simpler but darker vision ultimately brought us Ronald Reagan and the ascendancy of the political Right, which more than two decades later shows no sign of loosening its grip.--from publisher description.

"In the early 1960s, American conservatives seemed to have fallen on hard times. McCarthyism was on the run, and movements on the political left were grabbing headlines. The media lampooned John Birchers' accusations that Dwight Eisenhower was a communist puppet. Mainstream America snickered at warnings by California Congressman James B. Utt that "barefooted Africans" were training in Georgia to help the United Nations take over the country. Yet, in Utt's home district of Orange Country, thousands of middle-class suburbanites proceeded to organize a powerful conservative movement that would land Ronald Reagan in the White House and redefine the spectrum of acceptable politics into the next century.". "Suburban Warriors introduces us to these people: women hosting coffee klatches for Barry Goldwater in their tract houses; members of anticommunist reading groups organizing against sex education; pro-life Democrats gradually drawn into conservative circles; and new arrivals finding work in defense companies and a sense of community in Orange County's mushrooming evangelical churches. We learn what motivated them and how they interpreted their political activity. Lisa McGirr shows that their movement was not one of marginal people suffering from status anxiety, but rather one formed by successful entrepreneurial types with modern lifestyles and bright futures. She describes how these suburban pioneers created new political and social philosophies anchored in a fusion of Christian fundamentalism, xenophobic nationalism, and western libertarianism.". "While introducing these rank-and-file activists, McGirr chronicles Orange Country's rise from "nut country" to political vanguard. Through this history, she traces the evolution of the New Right from a virulent anticommunist, anti-establishment fringe to a broad national movement nourished by evangelical Protestantism. Her original contribution to the social history of politics broadens - and often upsets - our understanding of the deep and tenacious roots of popular conservatism in America."--BOOK JACKET.