“Superb . . . the best one-volume economic history of the United States in a long time and, perhaps, ever.” —Newsweek In this illuminating history, John Steele Gordon tells the extraordinary story of the world’s first economic superpower. He shows how the American economy became not only the world’s largest, but also its most dynamic and innovative. Combining its English political inheritance with its diverse, ambitious population, the nation was able to develop more wealth for more and more people as it grew. Far from a guaranteed success, America’s economy suffered near constant adversity. It survived a profound recession after the Revolution, an unwise decision by Andrew Jackson that left the country without a central bank for nearly eighty years, and the disastrous Great Depression of the 1930s. Yet, having weathered those trials, the economy became vital enough to Americanize the world in recent decades. Virtually every major development in technology in the twentieth century originated in the United States, and as the products of those technologies traveled around the globe, the result was a subtle, peaceful, and pervasive spread of American culture and perspective.

Describes the successful laying of a cable across the Atlantic Ocean in 1866, exploring the physical, financial, and technological challenges of the project and assessing the impact of the cable on the course of twentieth-century history.

In The Great Game, acclaimed business historian John Steele Gordon chronicles the rise of Wall Street from its humble beginnings as an American trading post to its domination of the world economy, bringing to life the remarkable cast of bankers and brokers, visionaries and crooks who made it happen. From Alexander Hamilton to Michael Milken, the history of Wall Street is a history of risk, courage, avarice, patriotism, power, genius, and, occasionally, remarkable stupidity. In Gordon, Wall Street has finally found a biographer worthy of its extraordinary story.

Our national debt is now so high that most of us have stopped thinking about it, because the prospect of bringing it under control is unimaginable. We consider it a national liability and fear our children will be forced to pay for our current excesses. John Steele Gordon is a welcome antidote. In 1997, his book, Hamilton's Blessing, offered a "biography" of the debt, making it very much a human drama while explaining the myriad, mostly positive, ways it has influenced America's history since Alexander Hamilton first proposed the virtues of a national debt in 1792. However, the 12 years since the book's initial publication have been perhaps the most dramatic in the debt's history-since it has more than doubled and continues on an ever-upward spiral. Now, more than ever, we need John Steele Gordon's wisdom-his revised and expanded edition of Hamilton's Blessing will put this historic expansion in perspective, allowing us to better participate in debate and discussion. Bringing a remarkable national institution to life, Gordon offers, in the process, an original view of American history, and insight into both well- and lesser-known figures who have influenced and charted our voyage, from Hamilton to Jay Cooke to John Maynard Keynes to the present. The national debt helped rescue the Union during the Civil War and raise the nation out of the Depression-thus offering hope it may serve a similar purpose in the decades to come.

The colorful story behind one of America's greatest monuments and of the ancient obelisks of Egypt, now scattered around the world. Conceived soon after the American Revolution ended, the great monument to George Washington was not finally completed until almost a century later; the great obelisk was finished in 1884, and remains the tallest stone structure in the world at 555 feet. The story behind its construction is a largely untold and intriguing piece of American history, which acclaimed historian John Steele Gordon relates with verve, connecting it to the colorful saga of the ancient obelisks of Egypt. Nobody knows how many obelisks were crafted in ancient Egypt, or even exactly how they were created and erected since they are made out of hard granite and few known tools of the time were strong enough to work granite. Generally placed in pairs at the entrances to temples, they have in modern times been ingeniously transported around the world to Istanbul, Paris, London, New York, and many other locations. Their stories illuminate that of the Washington Monument, once again open to the public following earthquake damage, and offer a new appreciation for perhaps the most iconic memorial in the country.

John Steele was educated at Victoria University of Wellington, and at Cambridge University, where he was a student of Thurston Dart. Steele was the first New Zealander to become a professional musicologist, and the first to achieve international repute, largely for his work on Italian music of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. This volume has been undertaken by the New Zealand Musicological Society as a tribute to its most distinguished member on the occasion of his retirement from Otago University. The main focus of the collection is the music of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.

Surveying almost 400 years of enterprise on this continent, "The Business of America" celebrates the high points and occasional lows in the history of business, from colonial days to the present.

The Middle East is the birthplace of astronomy and the centre for its development during the medieval period. In this brief introduction John Steele offers an intriguing insight into Middle Eastern achievements in astronomy and their profound influence on the rest of the world. Amongst other things, the book traces the Late Babylonians' ingenious schemes for modelling planetary motion. It also reveals how medieval Islamic advances in the study of the heavens, and the design of precise astronomical instruments, led to breakthroughs by Renaissance practitioners such as Copernicus and Kepler. An invaluable introduction to one of the oldest sciences in the world.