O'Connor, M: A Commercial Republic

As recently as 2008, when Presidents Bush and Obama acted to bail out the nation's crashing banks and failing auto companies, the perennial objection erupted anew: government has no business in business. Mike O'Connor argues that those who cite history to decry government economic intervention are invoking a tradition that simply does not exist. He uses deftly drawn historical analyses of major political and economic developments to puncture the abiding myth that business once operated apart from government.