New Books In Economics

Jeff Broxmeyer has written a fascinating and insightful book about the party system in New York during the Gilded Age, but this is really only the foundation of the analysis. Electoral Capitalism: The Party System in New York's Gilded Age (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020) unwraps the many layers that contribute to our understanding of the party system not only in New York during this period after the Civil War, but throughout much of American politics during this time. As Broxmeyer notes throughout the book, this concept of electoral capitalism organized the party system in Gilded Age New York—and helps us think about how struggles over unequal wealth, or wealth gaps, shape democracy in America and the evolution of the party system in the U.S. Electoral Capitalism essentially examines these ideas from the top down and from the bottom up, spending the first half of the book examining the different political machines that became the power and wealth brokers in New York (William “Boss” Tweed and Tammany Hall, and Ros