The Capitalist's Bible: The Essential Guide to Free Markets - and Why They Matter to You

by Gretchen Morgenson

Overview

The Capitalist’s Bible, edited by Gretchen Morgenson, an award-winning journalist with the New York Times, is the essential guide to capitalism and its many languages, customs, and practices. Including thinkers like Adam Smith, concepts like supply and demand, and developments like globalization, The Capitalist’s Bible is an essential primer that clarifies, informs, and answers all the questions that need to be addressed and fully understood in these difficult economic times.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061560989
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	09/01/2009
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	884,858
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Gretchen Morgenson is an assistant business and financial editor and a columnist at the New York Times, where she has covered the world financial markets since 1998 and won the Pulitzer Prize for her "trenchant and incisive" coverage of Wall Street. Having worked as a stockbroker at Dean Witter Reynolds in the early 1980s, Morgenson lends her reporting a depth of knowledge and skepticism uncommon in financial journalism.

Editorial Reviews

The Capitalist’s Bible is well-suited for individual investors hoping to glean anything that might prove beneficial to their portfolios, but it’s also perfect for students or devotees of economics…[It] is an admirable competitor for the title of [the capitalist’s] greatest tool.” — Better Investing

“A timely and informative primer...Morgenson’s book is essential for all who want to improve their capitalism literacy.” — Library Journal

From the Publisher

The Capitalist’s Bible is well-suited for individual investors hoping to glean anything that might prove beneficial to their portfolios, but it’s also perfect for students or devotees of economics…[It] is an admirable competitor for the title of [the capitalist’s] greatest tool.

Better Investing

Morgenson, the New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, has produced a timely and informative primer. Alluding to the current economic recession, she stresses that "getting wise to the ways of world financial markets…has never been more crucial than it is right now." To help educate readers to that end, she provides a thorough overview of capitalism—its essential tenets, names of chief theorists, historical background, as well as describing its mechanisms and institutions. Not only chronicling capitalist success stories like the explosive growth of the American middle class, she also examines capitalist disasters such as the Great Depression, evaluating the legacies of both growth and failure in an evenhanded way. She also performs the exemplary task of dissecting the advanced economic jargon, explaining how its application impacts people's lives. She rightly claims the "21st century has seen capitalism become the dominant economic system worldwide." Nowhere is this evolution more apparent than in modern-day Russia or China. Unfortunately her choice in presenting a selection of profiles of various countries in the chapter "Capitalism Around the World" seems both arbitrary and perfunctory, offering minimal critical insight on how capitalism has transformed these countries. Yet this remains a minor shortcoming. VERDICT Morgenson's book is essential for all who want to improve their capitalism literacy.—Richard Drezen, Brooklyn, NY

Library Journal