Person

Gary Gerstle

Related Excerpts

A worker sits with his head in his hands on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 24, 2008, as the markets endured losses.

How The Neoliberal Order Triumphed — And Why It’s Now Crumbling

Historian Gary Gerstle lays out an era's policies and ideologies, and what undermined them.
Collage illustration of a civil rights protest, inflated gas prices, and a Richard Nixon campaign poster.

Why America Abandoned the Greatest Economy in History

Was the country’s turn toward free-market fundamentalism driven by race, class, or something else? Yes.
President Bill Clinton speaks about the North American Free Trade Agreement at a town hall meeting in 1993.

The Logic of Capitalist Accumulation Explains Neoliberalism

Gary Gerstle’s new book tackles important questions of the last century about democracy, economy, and war. But it fails to answer a basic question.
Photo of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton laughing together.

Will Neoliberalism Ever End?

A new history shows how neoliberalism took power during a period of crisis, which leaves open the question of whether it can be forced out as a result of one.
Farm for sale in Kansas, 1938.
partner

The Early History of “Selling America to Americans”

Using film and advertising to sell capitalism and nationalism to immigrants in the early 20th century.
Empty speech bubbles emanating from people in an old house.

Popular History

What role do we really want history to be playing in our public life? And is the history we have actually doing that work?
Protesters and tenants facing displacement hold placards as they attend a rally against private equity-backed firm Greenbrook Partners in Brooklyn, New York on October 15, 2021.

Shared Terrain

The neoliberal order has been exposed as fraudulent, inefficient, and inequitable. Yet it hardly lies in the dustbin of history.
Close up illustration of Frederick Douglass

An American Conception of Justice

Historians have demonstrated how central racism has been to the formation of the U.S. But many of those same ideas have also been vital to combating white supremacy.

Remnants of the New Deal Order

We can only understand the left’s present dilemmas by seeing them in light of the conflicted legacy of the New Deal.