What Happened To The American Dream? 'Transaction Man' Aims To Explain
Nicholas Lemann's book seeks to put into context the turn that, little more than a decade ago, led to a caving economy — and takes a look at where things have gone since.
As politicians grapple with the best policies to ensure a better economic future for the country, it's essential to understand how the economy became so tilted against the middle class and poor in the first place.
In , Nicholas Lemann, a longtime staff writer and dean emeritus at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, offers his own take. His theory, as he writes in his introduction, is that the loss of the American dream occurred because of "our move from an institution-oriented to a transaction-oriented society," which meant concentrating power in the financial sector and away from government and larger corporations. This, he says, led
