Leon H. Keyserling: A Progressive Economist is the insightful biography of the life and thought of the influential liberal reformer Leon H. Keyserling. By examining Keyserling's life in the context of integrative liberalism, the biography aims to explore the origins of the concept of integrative liberalism and Keyserling's profound and provocative contribution to it. The book follows the political reformer's life from the beginning of his career as a member of Democratic Senator Robert Wagner's staff, at the same time showing how the Progressive Movement, before World War I, was the ideological and institutional origin for integrative liberalism. The Great Depression and subsequent New Deal, to which Keyserling was a significant contributor, allowed integrative liberalism to develop until the movement started losing vitality in the 1960's and came to an end during the Reagan Presidency. In the meantime, the book presents Keyserling as a major sculptor of Truman's economic policies, after which he left the government and began effectively debating public policy on his own. Tracing Keyserling's interactions with each presidency, the biography shows that Keyserling's policies and politics were expressive of integrated liberalism, an often-overlooked philosophy of reform in the second half of the twentieth century. The ideological cornerstone of integrative liberalism was a full employment public policy, expressed as economic growth and developed directly from United States history. The fear driving the policy was that there would be wide swings in the business cycle, resulting in underemployment and economic stagnation. This sentiment and fear has an impact even now in the twenty-first century, making Leon H. Keyserling a timely and profitable study for graduate and undergraduate students of history, economics, political science, and public administration.

Contains refereed articles on constrasting relational conceptions of the individual in economics. This book also covers the development of Adam Smith's style of lecturing; a comparison of problems encountered in the historian's work as editor, based upon editing Harrod's papers and Haberler's "Prosperity and Depression".

Collins re-examines the history of the United States from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, focusing on the federal government's determined pursuit of economic growth.

The economics profession in twentieth-century America began as a humble quest to understand the "wealth of nations." It grew into a profession of immense public prestige--and now suffers a strangely withered public purpose. Michael Bernstein portrays a profession that has ended up repudiating the state that nurtured it, ignoring distributive justice, and disproportionately privileging private desires in the study of economic life. Intellectual introversion has robbed it, he contends, of the very public influence it coveted and cultivated for so long. With wit and irony he examines how a community of experts now identified with uncritical celebration of ''free market'' virtues was itself shaped, dramatically so, by government and collective action. In arresting and provocative detail Bernstein describes economists' fitful efforts to sway a state apparatus where values and goals could seldom remain separate from means and technique, and how their vocation was ultimately humbled by government itself. Replete with novel research findings, his work also analyzes the historical peculiarities that led the profession to a key role in the contemporary backlash against federal initiatives dating from the 1930s to reform the nation's economic and social life. Interestingly enough, scholars have largely overlooked the history that has shaped this profession. An economist by training, Bernstein brings a historian's sensibilities to his narrative, utilizing extensive archival research to reveal unspoken presumptions that, through the agency of economists themselves, have come to mold and define, and sometimes actually deform, public discourse. This book offers important, even troubling insights to readers interested in the modern economic and political history of the United States and perplexed by recent trends in public policy debate. It also complements a growing literature on the history of the social sciences. Sure to have a lasting impact on its field, A Perilous Progress represents an extraordinary contribution of gritty empirical research and conceptual boldness, of grand narrative breadth and profound analytical depth.

Choices about budget priorities are arguably the most important made by the federal government, profoundly affecting the well-being of citizens. Bruce Jansson documents how presidents from FDR to Clinton have made ill-advised choices that wasted trillions of dollars. Going beyond charges of corruption or bureaucratic waste, the book is an eye-opening exposé revealing innumerable useless projects (military as well as civilian), unnecessary tax concessions, and the use of interest payments to cover deficit spending, among other costly mistakes. Using Office of Management and Budget projections through 2004, Jansson shows how the madness continues—and how an informed electorate can put an end to it.

As one of Roosevelt's "brain trusters" and a leading spokesman for the policies of the New Deal in the 1930s, Rexford Tugwell was a major force in government in one of the most critical periods in American history. In this colorful memoir, Tugwell begins with his entry as a freshman into the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in the fall of 1911 and concludes with his acceptance in 1933 of the post of Assistant Secretary of Agriculture in the Roosevelt Administration. Along the way, the reader is treated to a wealth of reactions and asides about a number of significant people, among them Scott Nearing, Simon Nelson Patten, Joseph Wharton, Ezra Pound, Thorstein Veblen, Allen Tate, and his colleagues on the New Republic of the 1920s. Through his often wryly ironic anecdotes, Tugwell reveals how the unique combination of people and events he encountered in the academic world directly influenced his later controversial social and economic reform policies. These years shaped a man who would leave an indelible mark on American life. To the Lesser Heights of Morningside illuminates not only the period of Rexford Tugwell's intellectual and political growth but the development of social reform and economic recovery ideas at two prominent universities during the twenties and thirties. Tugwell provides us with an intriguing and privileged glance into the intellectual climate and the complex of ideas that gave rise to the New Deal Era. As Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, and then Undersecretary, Tugwell took a bold stance on the government's role in the regulation of industry and establishment of social welfare programs. From 1935-36 he headed the Rural Resettlement Administration and aided in the formation of the Civilian Conservation Corps. Tugwell was the originator of currency legislation and of the processing tax. In 1941 he became governor of Puerto Rico, where he did much to improve economic and political conditions. Among his written works is he definitive biography of FDR, The Democratic Roosevelt. Tugwell returned to teaching after his governorship and held both active and honorary posts until his death in 1979.