In this penetrating volume, Zachary Karabell examines the continuous thread that runs through the tapestry of the American experience -- the belief that we can create a perfect society -- and envisions what the next great era will be. Just as the Puritan vision of a city on a hill was supplanted by the Founding Fathers' vision of individuality, just as the expansive vision of a government-led Great Society was eclipsed by the New Economy of the 1990s, so too is the New Economy being replaced by what Karabell contends will be a period when community and spirituality occupy center stage.

A Visionary Nation: Four Centuries of American Dreams and What Lies Ahead

Karabell, Zachary

Reference

Harper-perennial

Inside Money: Brown Brothers Harriman and the American Way of Power

A sweeping history of the legendary private investment firm Brown Brothers Harriman, exploring its central role in the story of American wealth and its rise to global power Conspiracy theories have always swirled around Brown Brothers Harriman, and not without reason. Throughout the nineteenth century, when America was convulsed by a financial panic essentially every twenty years, Brown Brothers quietly went from strength to strength. By the turn of the twentieth century, Brown Brothers was unquestionably at the heart of the American Establishment. As America's reach extended, Brown Brothers worked hand in glove with the State Department, notably in Nicaragua in the early twentieth century, where the firm essentially took over the country's economy. To the Brown family, the virtue of their dealings was a given; their form of muscular Protestantism, forged on the playing fields of Groton and Yale, was the acme of civilization, and it was their duty to import that civilization to the world. When, during the Great Depression, Brown Brothers ensured their strength by merging with Averell Harriman's investment bank to form Brown Brothers Harriman, the die was cast for the role the firm would play on the global stage during World War II and thereafter, as its partners served at the highest levels of government to shape the international system that defines the world to this day. In Inside Money, acclaimed historian, commentator, and former financial executive Zachary Karabell offers the first full and frank look inside this institution against the backdrop of American history. Blessed with complete access to the company's archives, as well as a deep knowledge of the larger forces at play, Karabell has created an X-ray of American power--financial, political, cultural--as it has evolved from the early 1800s to the present. Today, Brown Brothers Harriman remains a private partnership and a beacon of sustainable capitalism, having forgone the heady speculative upsides of the past thirty years but also having avoided any role in the devastating downsides. The firm is no longer in the command capsule of the American economy, but, arguably, that is to its credit. If its partners cleaved to any one adage over the generations, it is that a relentless pursuit of more can destroy more than it creates.

Business & Money

Biography & History

Penguin??Books

It was the last presidential campaign in which Americans truly had a choice across the ideological spectrum, from the far Right to the far Left. And the winner, according to pundits and pollsters alike, would be the Republican standard-bearer, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York. After sixteen years of Democratic rule, Americans seemed tired of the party and, in particular, of the somewhat inept incumbent, Harry Truman. Furthermore, Truman's chances appeared doomed by the growing strength of Henry Wallace's left-wing Progressive Party and Strom Thurmond's right-wing States' Rights Party, both drawing upon traditional Democratic constituencies. Zachary Karabell tells the fascinating story of all four campaigns. We see how Truman's staff developed a superb reelection plan that ignored the South and concentrated on the farm vote — a scheme that would give birth to Truman's historic "whistle-stop" tour of the nation's heartland. We learn how Dewey nearly lost the GOP nomination to Harold Stassen and how, in the last weeks, his gentlemanly campaign fell victim to complacency, owing to the candidate's wide lead in the polls. We meet Wallace, the naive, disaffected former vice president who — preaching racial equality, economic justice, and accommodation with the Soviet Union — took a tour through the South accompanied by black aides, and was pelted with fruit for his pains. And we witness how Thurmond led the white supremacist Dixiecrats in a walkout of the Democratic convention and contested the election throughout the South. In 1948, the United States was on the cusp of changes that would transform the political landscape forever. Television was still an infant technology, a newfangled toy that many predicted would be a passing fad, unable to compete with radio. Karabell argues that 1948 was the last time a presidential race would be dominated by radio and print media, and the last time progressive and far-Left viewpoints were openly debated and covered in the mainstream press, before the Cold War consensus placed an entire spectrum of political views beyond the pale. Finally, Karabell shows why the polls were totally wrong, and how in the end Truman indulged in questionable political tactics to win the presidency. And he explains why this victory came at great cost to Truman's second term and to the country, paving the way for a Republican backlash and the virulent anti-Communist crusades of the 1950s. This vivid narrative is political history at its most absorbing. And it is a cautionary tale that is highly relevant to the quandaries of presidential politics at the beginning of a new century.

The Last Campaign: How Harry Truman Won the 1948 Election

History

Americas

KNOPF

The building of the Suez Canal was considered the greatest engineering feat of the nineteenth century, but, as Zachary Karabell shows, it was much more than a marvel of construction. It was a moment when the dreams and hopes of two cultures, several states, and thousands of ordinary people converged to change the face of the earth. Parting the Desert describes an extraordinary meeting between East and West. The Egyptians hoped the canal would lead to a national renaissance and renewed power in the eastern Mediterranean. The French expected the canal to enhance world trade and advance Western civilization. Napoleon Bonaparte first raised the possibility of building a waterway during his occupation of Egypt in the late eighteenth century. The idea was kept alive by the utopian followers of Saint-Simon and was then taken up by Ferdinand de Lesseps, the energetic, ambitious French diplomat who masterminded the project. As Karabell points out, Lesseps was often in the right place at the right time, and he had the good luck of forging a friendship with the young Egyptian prince Muhammad Said. In 1854, Said became the ruler of Egypt and granted Lesseps the concession to cut a hundred-mile-long canal across the isthmus of Suez. It would take fifteen years of ceaseless effort before that dream became reality. A brilliant entrepreneur, Lesseps traveled throughout Europe and the Near East to raise support and money. He convinced thousands of ordinary French citizens to invest in the canal company, and though he never won over the British prime minister, Lord Palmerston, he did convince British merchants and businessmen that the canal would benefit them. During years of careful diplomacy, Lesseps neutralized the Ottoman sultan, and with the help of his cousin the Empress Eugénie, he won the backing of the emperor of France, Napoleon III. By the time the canal was completed, it had become a symbol of progress and a sign that East and West could coexist and cooperate, and Lesseps was lionized throughout Europe as a hero of the industrial age. But it was not smooth sailing all the way: the company relied heavily on forced labor, diplomatic intrigues continued to the very end, and technical and financial obstacles constantly threatened the project’s completion. The creation of the Suez Canal captured the imagination of the world. It was heralded as a symbol of progress that would unite nations, but its legacy is mixed. It was supposed to strengthen the Middle East and bridge cultures; instead the gap widened, and the region remains a flash point for conflict. Parting the Desert is both a transporting narrative and a meditation on the origins of the modern Middle East.

Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez Canal

Middle East

In The Last Campaign, Zachary Karabell rescues the 1948 presidential campaign from the annals of political folklore ("Dewey Defeats Truman," the Chicago Tribune memorably and erroneously heralded), to give us a fresh look at perhaps the last time the American people could truly distinguish what the candidates stood for. In 1948,Harry Truman, the feisty working-class Democratic incumbent was one of the most unpopular presidents the country had ever known. His Republican rival, the aloof Thomas Dewey, was widely thought to be a shoe-in. These two major party candidates were flanked on the far left by the Progressive Henry Wallace, and on the far right by white supremacist Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond. The Last Campaign exposes the fascinating story behind Truman’s legendary victory and turns a probing eye toward a by-gone era of political earnestness, when, for “the last time in this century, an entire spectrum of ideologies was represented,” a time before television fundamentally altered the political landscape.

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Award-winning historian Zachary Karabell tells the epic story of the greatest engineering feat of the nineteenth century--the building of the Suez Canal-- and shows how it changed the world. The dream was a waterway that would unite the East and the West, and the ambitious, energetic French diplomat and entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps was the mastermind behind the project. Lesseps saw the project through fifteen years of financial challenges, technical obstacles, and political intrigues. He convinced ordinary French citizens to invest their money, and he won the backing of Napoleon III and of Egypt's prince Muhammad Said. But the triumph was far from perfect: the construction relied heavily on forced labor and technical and diplomatic obstacles constantly threatened completion. The inauguration in 1869 captured the imagination of the world. The Suez Canal was heralded as a symbol of progress that would unite nations, but its legacy is mixed. Parting the Desert is both a transporting narrative and a meditation on the origins of the modern Middle East.

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

America is a nation based on an idea. For nearly four centuries, Americans have shared the conviction that a perfect world is within reach. Running through our history is the presumption that we can have it all.
In A Visionary Nation, Zachary Karabell shows how this utopian impulse forms a continuous thread in the tapestry of the American experience and represents who we really are. In this penetrating volume, he brings the core of American history to life by examining its successive stages, each promising utopia and none delivering it. Karabell reveals that during every stage, there have been men and women who strove to transform the world. These are the visionaries who have defined American culture. Part history, part essay, part prediction, this profoundly original work tells the stories of visionaries past and present, from Anne Hutchinson to FDR, Alexander Hamilton to Bill Gates. It shows that if our history has proven one thing, it is that no era lasts forever. In striving for the ideal, we have achieved much, but never have realized our dreams of spiritual fulfillment and material prosperity. And so we are chronically plagued by disappointment that we have not achieved everything.
Along with this distinctive view of American history, Karabell offers his own vision of where our nation is heading. Just as the Puritan vision of a City on a Hill was supplanted by the Founding Fathers' vision of individuality, and just as the expansive vision of a government-led Great Society was eclipsed by the New Economy in the 1990s, so too will the New Economy be replaced in our near future by a period when community and spirituality will occupy center stage. Provocative, intelligent, and deeply engaging, A Visionary Nation provides a framework for understanding America's past while preparing us for the next phase of the nation's growth.

Economics

Harper

Kennedy, Johnson, and the Quest for Justice: The Civil Rights Tapes

Peer inside the White House as Presidents Kennedy and Johnson grapple with racial injustice in America. This remarkable book is composed of actual transcripts―most never before published―from the secret recordings that Presidents Kennedy and Johnson made of White House meetings and telephone conversations between the violent crisis in 1962, when James Meredith attempted to enroll at the all-white University of Mississippi, and the groundbreaking passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Setting these transcripts within an historical narrative, Jonathan Rosenberg and Zachary Karabell present the story of America's struggle for racial equality during two tumultuous years. Kennedy, Johnson, and the Quest for Justice brings the reader into the room as Kennedy argues with Mississippi governor Ross Barnett and the white business leaders of Birmingham, Alabama, and as Johnson makes late-night phone calls to Martin Luther King Jr., NAACP head Roy Wilkins, and Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham. As fly-on-the-wall history, this book gives us an unprecedented grasp of the way the White House affected civil rights history and consequently transformed America. Part of the Presidential Recordings Project, Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, General Editors: Ernest May and Philip Zelikow.

Rosenberg, Jonathan

W.W.Norton&Company

President Clinton declares that a two-year education should be the right of all Americans. Congress passes a 40 billion package of tax breaks and scholarships aimed at making a degree accessible to everyone. Almost twothirds of high school graduates now go on to some form of higher education, and yet at the same time, those colleges and universities, inundated with a new kind of student, have been slow to respond to this revolutionary change.Zachary Karabell spent over a year traveling the country interviewing students, graduate students, faculty, and adjunct teachers, and the result is a portrait of American higher education that is neither conservative nor liberal and that needs to be taken seriously. There is a quiet revolution occurring that willthat ischanging the nature of education in this country.”Higher education is becoming mass education,” writes Karabell. The crucial clash on today's campuses is not between traditionalists, multiculturalists, and tenured radicals, but between the competing needs and desires of students, professors, administrators, and the larger society.The overwhelming majority of today's students are working-class people seeking education to get a job; they are not seeking a liberal education, nor planning to go on to graduate school. Most faculty members, products of the elite graduate schools that have insulated them from the needs of real-world people, are often profoundly ill-equipped to handle this changing student body. By exploring the myriad perspectives of these conflicting expectations Karabell concludes that a radical democratization of higher education is not only inevitable, it is desirable, and it will require dramatic changes in the structure and presumptions about education beyond the high school level.Topping 175 billion a year, spending for American higher education will join health care and welfare as one of the top national issues, yet there is precious little real or broad-based understanding of the issues and social forces at work. Eschewing any political agenda, yet unafraid to ask as many questions as he answers, Zachary Karabell has provided the first reasoned examination of what has become a national concern. Sure to spark intense debate, What's College For? is a clarion call for reform.

What's College For?: The Struggle To Define American Higher Education

World

Basic Books

President Clinton declares that a two-year education should be the right of all Americans. Congress passes a 40 billion package of tax breaks and scholarships aimed at making a degree accessible to everyone. Almost twothirds of high school graduates now go on to some form of higher education, and yet at the same time, those colleges and universities, inundated with a new kind of student, have been slow to respond to this revolutionary change.Zachary Karabell spent over a year traveling the country interviewing students, graduate students, faculty, and adjunct teachers, and the result is a portrait of American higher education that is neither conservative nor liberal and that needs to be taken seriously. There is a quiet revolution occurring that willthat ischanging the nature of education in this country.”Higher education is becoming mass education,” writes Karabell. The crucial clash on today's campuses is not between traditionalists, multiculturalists, and tenured radicals, but between the competing needs and desires of students, professors, administrators, and the larger society.The overwhelming majority of today's students are working-class people seeking education to get a job; they are not seeking a liberal education, nor planning to go on to graduate school. Most faculty members, products of the elite graduate schools that have insulated them from the needs of real-world people, are often profoundly ill-equipped to handle this changing student body. By exploring the myriad perspectives of these conflicting expectations Karabell concludes that a radical democratization of higher education is not only inevitable, it is desirable, and it will require dramatic changes in the structure and presumptions about education beyond the high school level.Topping 175 billion a year, spending for American higher education will join health care and welfare as one of the top national issues, yet there is precious little real or broad-based understanding of the issues and social forces at work. Eschewing any political agenda, yet unafraid to ask as many questions as he answers, Zachary Karabell has provided the first reasoned examination of what has become a national concern. Sure to spark intense debate, What's College For? is a clarion call for reform.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Karabell, Zachary. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Karabell, Zachary

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Karabell, Zachary. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

A Visionary Nation: Four Centuries of American Dreams and What Lies Ahead

Inside Money: Brown Brothers Harriman and the American Way of Power

The Last Campaign: How Harry Truman Won the 1948 Election

Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez Canal

The Last Campaign: How Harry Truman Won the 1948 Election

Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez Canal

A Visionary Nation: Four Centuries of American Dreams and What Lies Ahead

Kennedy, Johnson, and the Quest for Justice: The Civil Rights Tapes

What's College For?: The Struggle To Define American Higher Education

What's College For?: The Struggle To Define American Higher Education