One Nation Under Debt: Hamilton, Jefferson, and the History of What We Owe
The Untold History of America's First Debt and its Relevance in Today's Economy&#8220;Wright tackles the thorny question of what makes countries wealthy through the lens of a U.S. addiction: government indebtedness.&#8221;-Simon Constable, TheStreet.com&#8220;Think that our burgeoning national debt is something new? We've been down this road before. One Nation Under Debt traces the roots of today's looming fiscal crisis back to the birth of the republic and shows how the founding fathers averted financial Armageddon.&#8221;-William Bernstein&#8220;This is economic history both high and low-from Alexander Hamilton, the wizard who put America's finances in order, to the men and women who secured America's future by buying its bonds.&#8221;-Richard Brookhiser&#8220;This book is magnetic. Wright regales us with the bankers and merchants, slaveholders and bondholders, and pen-named politicians of the Early Republic.&#8221;-James W. Mueller, Ph.D., Chief Historian, Independence National Historical Park"If I could write like Wright, I would be thrilled. Some passages in the book are stunning&#8212;almost poetic. For anyone interested in the evolution of the U.S. economy and its early financial system, the first six chapters of this book are essential. Wright makes his point: under skilled management (e.g., Hamilton), debt is good for deepening capital markets, but incurred excessively to finance wars or inappropriate government expenditures, it can eventually prove disastrous."-Richard Vietor, Harvard Business School,Journal of American History