Dan Sinykin explores how changes in the publishing industry have affected fiction, literary form, and what it means to be an author. Giving an inside look at the industry’s daily routines, personal dramas, and institutional crises, he reveals how conglomeration has shaped what kinds of books and writers are published by examining four different sectors of the publishing industry: mass-market books; trade publishers that encouraged genre elements in literary fiction; nonprofits such as Graywolf; and the distinctive niche of employee-owned W. W. Norton.

Written in gripping and lively prose, and featuring vivid portraits of key industry figures, this deeply original book recasts the past six decades of American fiction.

What went wrong with capitalism? Ruchir Sharma’s explanation is unlike any you have heard before. Progressives are partly right when they mock modern capitalism as “socialism for the rich,” but what really happened in recent decades is that government in developed nations expanded in just about every measurable dimension, from spending and regulation to the sheer scale of its rescues each time the economy wobbled. The result, Sharma says, is “socialized risk,” expensive government guarantees, for everyone―welfare for the poor, entitlements for the middle class, and bailouts for the rich.