The Hidden History of Neoliberalism, Thom Hartmann
The Hidden History of Neoliberalism, Thom Hartmann
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The Hidden History of Neoliberalism
How Reaganism Gutted America and How to Restore Its Greatness

Author: Thom Hartmann, Greg Palast

Narrator: Sean Pratt

Unabridged: 4 hr 28 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Ascent Audio

Published: 09/13/2022


Synopsis

America's most popular progressive radio host and New York Times bestselling author Thom Hartmann reveals how and why neoliberalism became so prevalent in the United States and why it's time for us to turn our backs to it.

While America is at a crossroads regarding its economic future, many of us don't fully understand how we got here. In this powerful and accessible book, Thom Hartmann demystifies neoliberalism and explains how we can use this pivotal point in time to create a more positive future.

This book traces the history of neoliberalism-which applies to a set of capitalistic philosophies favoring free trade, financial austerity, and deregulation-up to the present. Hartmann explains how neoliberalism was sold as a cure for wars and the Great Depression. He outlines the impact that it has had on America, looking at different sectors, including healthcare, unemployment, and education.

Hartmann highlights how America can go one of two ways: continue going down the road to neoliberal oligarchy, as supported by the GOP, or choose to return to FDR's Keynesian economics, raise taxes on the rich, reverse free trade, and create a more pluralistic society.

About Thom Hartmann

Thom Hartmann is the four-time Project Censored Award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of twenty-five books currently in print in over a dozen languages on five continents. Hartmann is also an internationally known speaker on culture and communications, an author, and an innovator in the fields of psychiatry, ecology, and economics.

The cofounder (with his wife, Louise) and former Executive Director of The New England Salem Children's Village (1978) and The Hunter School (1997), he has led national innovations in the areas of residential treatment for abused children and private/public education for learning-disabled children.

He has helped set up hospitals, famine relief programs, schools, and refugee centers in India, Uganda, Australia, Colombia, Russia, and the United States through the German-based Salem International program. Formerly rostered with the State of Vermont as a psychotherapist, founder of The Michigan Healing Arts Center, and licensed as an NLP Trainer by Richard Bandler (who wrote the foreword to one of Thom's books), he was the originator of the revolutionary "Hunter/Farmer Hypothesis" to understand the psychiatric condition known as Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD).

A guest faculty member at Goddard College in Vermont, he also synthesized the "Younger/Older Culture model" for describing the underpinnings-and possible solutions-to the world's ecological and socio-political crises, suggesting that many of our problems are grounded in cultural "stories" which go back thousands of years.

Leonardo DiCaprio was inspired by Thom's book The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight to make the movie "The 11th Hour" (in which Thom appears), and a series of environmental videos narrated by Hartmann and DiCaprio, available at Green World Rising.

Talkers Magazine named Thom Hartmann as the most important progressive talk show host in America for the past decade, and for three of the past five years the #1 most important progressive host, in their "Heavy Hundred" ranking. His radio show is syndicated on for-profit radio stations nationwide by WYD Media, on non-profit and community stations nationwide by Pacifica, across the entire North American continent on SiriusXM Satellite radio, on cable systems nationwide by Cable Radio Network (CRN) and Free Speech TV, on its own YouTube channel, via subscription podcasts, worldwide through the US American Forces Network, and through the Thom Hartmann App in the App Store. The radio show is also simulcast as TV in realtime into nearly 60 million US and Canadian homes by the Free Speech TV Network on Dish Network, DirectTV, and cable TV systems nationwide.

As an entrepreneur, he's founded several successful businesses which still are operating, and lived and worked with his wife, Louise, and their three (now adult) children on several continents.

He was born and grew up in Michigan, and retains strong ties to the Midwest, although he and Louise have lived in New Hampshire, Vermont, Georgia, Germany, Washington DC, and Oregon.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Tim on December 17, 2024

Back in the day, I hated Reagan almost as much as I hate Trump today. Reagan turned the Republican party into a cult and thereby enabled the Trump cult that's plaguing us today.......more

Goodreads review by JAMES D PLASPOHL on February 24, 2023

Unlike reviewer Doug Lewars, who misspelled Milton Friedman's name (as Martin Friedman), I think the book is "fair and balanced" because it rises above all the politics and clearly points out that both parties have fully participated in the Miltonian laissez faire deregulation shift that has taken t......more

Goodreads review by MaskedSanity­ on November 02, 2022

Much like other books in the "Hidden History" series that I've read, I found myself getting angry as I read the book. Not due to disliking the book, but due to the stuff that I've learned. Thom Hartmann very much understands history and the lessons from it. He doesn't just preach at you, he uses evi......more

Goodreads review by Science and on February 28, 2025

This is a small book with large print, only 159 pages (+ references), so I read it in two comfortable sittings. I really wish the publisher would bundle together some of Hartmann’s “mini books” into something more substantial, but there is no question that what he has to say is worth reading. The wr......more

Goodreads review by Bruce on February 20, 2025

Wow! A very concise description of neoliberalism and the history of its rise in the US and the world. Hartmann recounts the formative years with economists Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, the Mount Pelerin Society, and Milton Friedman. He shows how their ideas influenced Margaret Thatcher in 1978 and......more