Capital Ideas

This article appears in the April 2026 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Read more from the issue.

Capitalism: A Global History
By Sven Beckert
Penguin Press

Capitalism and Its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI
By John Cassidy
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

The wreckage of the postwar economy of broad prosperity, intensified by the Democratic embrace of neoliberalism by Presidents Carter, Clinton, and Obama, created the backlash that led directly to Donald Trump.