The Great Enrichment: A New History of American Growth and Inequality, 1865–1945 (Markets and Governments in Economic History)

"A revelatory economic history of America's Gilded Age-and how it wasn't just the Robber Barons who benefitted. The Gilded Age, spanning the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, was the time when the United States got rich. Or rather, when parts of the United States got rich. Because as much as the era is synonymous with staggering economic growth, it also doubles as America's cautionary tale for the perils of leaving rich people and institutions unregulated. It was the time of extractive industrialists, worker exploitation, stifled economic mobility, and racial exclusion. The United States learned those lessons the hard way. In his economic history of the Gilded Age, economic historian Vincent Geloso doesn't contest any of this traditional history. But he does revisit the math. The Great Enrichment is an economic history of America's rise to affluence, one that Geloso shows was also remarkable for how it raised the country's economic floor. The conventional contrast of Robber Barons against huddled masses is, in Geloso's analysis, unsubstantiated by data.