In Pity the Billionaire, Thomas Frank, examines the peculiar mechanism by which dire economic circumstances have delivered wildly unexpected political results.

http://media.us.macmillan.com/video/olmk/macmillanaudio/PityTheBillionaire.mp3

Americans believe that money buys results in Congress, and that business interests wield control over our legislature. Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig takes a clear-eyed look at how we arrived at this crisis in Republic Lost.

The Change I Believe In is a collection of  The Nation’s editor and publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel’s commentaries and columns from the first years of the Obama administration, an era that has come to be defined by reform and reaction.

A three-judge panel from the D.C. Circuit court has upheld the constitutionality of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act and Ian Millhiser with the Center for American Progress tells us what that means. Then Mary Griffitts, a jury consultant talks about what’s next for the jurors in the Dr. Conrad Murray trial.

The Madoff family is talking about their shame and the crime that Bernie committed. Diana B. Henriques has written The Wizard of Lies, a book about the Bernie Madoff scandal. Then, Marty London talks about how he found the body of Mark Madoff and what happened after Bernie confessed.

Veteran journalist and Truthdig editor, Robert Scheer talks about his latest book, The Great American Stickup. Then, just how bad are public school lunches? Sarah Wu goes undercover  in Fed Up With Lunch, an eye-opening account of what kids are being served in school cafeterias.

The end of the cold war was thought to signal the triumph of Western capitalism over Communism. In Maonomics , Loretta Napoleoni argues what we are witnessing instead is the beginning of the collapse of capitalism and the victory of “communism with a profit motive.

Economist and NY Times columnist Robert H. Frank on what Charles Darwin can teach us about building a better society in The Darwin Economy.

Age of Greed is Jeff Madrick‘s  vividly told history of how greed bred America’s economic ills over the last forty years, and of the men most responsible for them.

Susan M. Wachter, a leader in the field of real estate and finance, examines key elements of the mortgage meltdown in The American Mortgage System.