Annotated+Bibliography

//Excellent source with extensive notes, bibliography and index. 474 pages.//
===This is the most recent work of the well-known Republican Kevin Phillips known as “one of the nation’s most perceptive thinkers”. This volume is full of detailed charts and graphs for easy access to important statistical information on wealth concentration, individual and family wealth and fortunes made listed according to industry. Phillips’ early chapters deal with the 18th & 19th Centuries and how the fortunes that founded America were often profits made from “wartime spoils”. He charts how wealth concentration has changed over time: the top 1% owned 10-20% of all wealth after the Revolution but now the top 1% owns about 50% of all wealth. Phillips exposes the “myth” of laissez-faire economics and he points out the overworked nature of the average American: “over 350 hours more per year” than Europeans. The problem with this, Phillips says, is that this sort of unchecked concentration of wealth is a bad influence on democracy and ultimately gives the ultra-rich far more political influence than the rest of us resulting in a plutocracy.===

//Very Good source with useful bibliography and index. 702 pages.//
===Zinn’s text is a history that is notable for its emphasis on the stories of ordinary citizens rather than the stories of the few notables who are usually featured in history books. With keen insight and smooth narration, Zinn highlights the untold history of America with plentiful citations of primary sources and specific detail. Especially interesting and relevant is his chapter entitled “Robber Barons and Rebels” noting the mixed-blessing of the Industrial Revolution and the unethical practices of those who made their fortunes thereby. Here, Zinn quotes Henry George, a self-taught worker, from his 1879 book Progress and Poverty: “It is true that wealth has been greatly increased, and that the average of comfort, leisure and refinement has been raised; but these gains are not general. In them the lowest class do not share…”(264) demonstrating that, while a few did benefit, there were many who did not and who remained in a poverty that Zinn is able to portray effectively with his first-person sources.===