World War I | The Spring Offensive | 3

Have you ever felt powerless to impact politics? Like the major decisions are all being made by powerful people far away? You’re not alone—and things haven’t always been this way. In The Power Elite, American sociologist C. Wright Mills discusses how a small group of corporate, military, and political leaders has taken over a vast majority of American political and economic decision-making. This class of power elites are unaccountable to the people, can exercise their power broadly, and have exploited many American institutions for their own benefit.

Writing in 1956, Mills explores how the power elite came into existence after the American Civil War and how they solidified their power in the years after World War II. He also discusses who these elites are, how they operate, and what their rule means for the American people. Our guide to The Power Elite will cover his theories while also providing historical examples, dissenting opinions, and context for the era in which the book was written.

In 2004, General Stanley McChrystal took over as commander of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Task Force fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq. The sprawling organization—encompassing strategists, analysts, and elite special forces from every branch of the U.S. military—was struggling to make headway against an unconventional enemy and environment.

In Team of Teams, McChrystal describes how he transformed the slow-moving bureaucratic task force into an agile, adaptable network of teams united by a “shared consciousness”, trust, and decentralized decision-making. After years of being outmaneuvered by Al Qaeda, the reinvented task force pulled together to eliminate terrorist leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi and began winning the fight against terrorism in Iraq. These accomplishments hold lessons for all kinds of organizations struggling with unconventional challenges and environments today.

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein is a study of the history of economic shock therapy, which aims to quickly improve a country’s economy through rapid privatization, deregulation, and severe cuts in government spending. She also describes how it gave rise to the disaster capitalism complex: a privatized system of destruction and rebuilding that funnels billions of dollars into corporate pockets. The book discusses the incredible harm that economic shock therapy and disaster capitalism have caused to millions of people all over the world.

Klein is an award-winning author, filmmaker, and activist. She’s dedicated her life to studying the personal and environmental harms that result from wars and unchecked capitalism.

The field of economics is plagued by fallacies, which inevitably influence national policies that end up doing more harm than good. At the root of these fallacies is a tendency to consider only how economic policies will affect specific groups of people in the short term, while neglecting the long-term effects on other industries and consumers. Failure to consider the long-term, broad effects of policies leads the government to impose policies that sometimes exacerbate the problem they intend to solve.

In this often-cited book, Henry Hazlitt gives a clear, concise explanation of the secondary consequences of a range of economic policies—including rent control, inflation, and tariffs. In this summary, you’ll learn how labor-saving technology actually creates more jobs, why minimum wage laws increase unemployment and decrease collective wealth, and how saving money supports the economy more than spending it.

In his classic 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom, Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman argues that a society cannot maintain political freedom without a robust commitment to free-market capitalism—and that for capitalism to function best, it must be free of government interference. It is hard to overstate the extent to which Friedman’s once-controversial ideas have triumphed. Over the past 40 years, governments across the world have moved to market-based solutions by reducing marginal tax rates, eliminating tariffs, privatizing public monopolies, and introducing choice in public education. Some might disagree about the effects of Friedman’s ideas—but no one can deny their influence.

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein is a study of the history of economic shock therapy, which aims to quickly improve a country’s economy through rapid privatization, deregulation, and severe cuts in government spending. She also describes how it gave rise to the disaster capitalism complex: a privatized system of destruction and rebuilding that funnels billions of dollars into corporate pockets. The book discusses the incredible harm that economic shock therapy and disaster capitalism have caused to millions of people all over the world.

Klein is an award-winning author, filmmaker, and activist. She’s dedicated her life to studying the personal and environmental harms that result from wars and unchecked capitalism.

Conventional accounts of American history tend to focus on the people at the top—presidents, generals, CEOs, and other influential figures and their struggles, ambitions, hopes, and dreams. But what about average people? The ones who had to live with the consequences of elite decisions, and who often struggled in obscurity? In A People’s History of the United States, historian Howard Zinn aims to tell their story, providing a bottom-up view of American history focusing on Indigenous people, Black Americans, women, laborers, and activists.

Our guide outlines Zinn’s interpretation of significant events, themes, and historical trends in American history. Through our commentary, we’ll provide alternative opinions on the motivations behind and consequences of historical events. We’ll also further explain Zinn’s approach to history and provide additional context for his arguments as well as his perspective on events that happened after the book’s publication.

The Diary of a Young Girl is one of the most acclaimed works of the 20th century. Written by Anne Frank from 1942 to 1944, the diary reveals the humanity of those who suffered at the hands of the Nazis during their occupation of the Netherlands. Anne wrote about her experiences with anger, love, puberty, and fear as she and her family hid from an occupying force that wished to see her and her Jewish counterparts dead. Tight quarters, limited food, and the inability to go outside took an emotional toll on Anne and her fellow residents. This led to tensions that reflected the raging war taking place outside of their hiding place.

In Caste, Isabel Wilkerson argues that the racial tensions in the United States are better explained through the lens of caste, not race—a 400-year-old hierarchy placing white people at the top and Black people at the bottom. Wilkerson examines the different caste systems around the world and how they damage the lives of everyone involved, even those at the top. She believes that to understand how to move forward, we must examine the past and the racial structures that keep progress as a nation at bay.

In this guide, we’ll explore the basics of Wilkerson’s caste theory, the eight tenets of a caste system, how the caste system affects the lives of people in the upper and lower castes, and how we can move away from caste and create a more equitable society. We’ll also compare Wilkerson’s ideas to those of other books on the subject of race, such as Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow.

Widely acclaimed upon its publication in 2017, The Color of Law demonstrates that racial residential segregation—the fact that some neighborhoods are almost exclusively African American while others are almost exclusively white—is the result of explicit government policy rather than personal choice and random chance. From the conclusion of the Civil War through to the present day, federal, state, and local governments have enacted laws to confine African Americans to particular areas and prevent them from moving into others. These policies have had a profound and lasting impact on African Americans, affecting their educational and job opportunities, economic well-being, and physical health.

The 1619 Project is an anthology of essays edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones and co-created with the New York Times that seeks to reframe American history with the institution of slavery at its core. The book asserts that American history began in 1619 with the arrival of the first ship of enslaved Africans, one year before the Mayflower arrived. It also argues that, American democracy and the prosperous nation we know today were largely built by enslaved Black Americans but that this demographic is almost entirely excluded from America’s founding stories and remains suppressed today due to racist institutions that persist from slavery.

This guide will reframe America’s founding story by exploring how the institution of slavery has impacted our economy, laws, society, and the livelihoods of Black Americans. We’ll conclude by discussing Hannah-Jones’s recommendations for how the government can make reparations for these injustices. Throughout the guide, we’ll provide a broader perspective by discussing accounts from other historians, economists, and researchers.

If you could spend several weeks in the body of someone of a different race, would you? In 1959, one man tried to do this. White journalist John Howard Griffin darkened his skin to appear like a Black man, then traveled for six weeks throughout the segregated Southern US. Griffin predicted that he’d experience racial discrimination, and he hoped this outcome would convince white Americans that the US was not the racism-free country they thought it was. In Black Like Me, Griffin’s account of his journey, he argues that his hypothesis was correct: Black Southerners faced brutal racism.

In this guide, we’ll describe Griffin’s experiences passing as a Black man and share his conclusions about Southern race relations. Throughout this guide, we’ll contextualize Griffin’s experiences and ideas by exploring the history of racism according to experts such as Ibram X. Kendi and Michelle Alexander. Furthermore, we’ll outline critics’ opinions of this controversial book. Finally, we’ll examine the relevance of Griffin’s ideas to life today.