This forcefully argued book offers a provocative picture of the political, intellectual, and economic forces that have shaped the history of the United States from its founding to the present day. Offering an extensive and in-depth critique of laissez-faire doctrine and a novel reformulation of the work of American System writers such as Daniel Raymond, Henry Carey, and Thorstein Veblen, author Donald Gibson traces America's rise to global supremacy. He examines how free-market ideology and the "establishment" networks exemplified by Wall Street and the Council for Foreign Relations combined to lead us to the political and economic crises that America faces at the dawn of the twenty-first century.