The public has been painfully aware of the economy’s stagnation for a long time. In this major new volume, leading thinkers in the social sciences directly confront the various economic difficulties facing the United States today. Underlying each essay is the premise that these problems can be understood only in a broad historical context–that such difficulties arise not from cyclical phenomena, but from structural distortions in the economy. These essays furnish more than hard-hitting criticisms of the various received economic wisdoms: they offer hope as they formulate new economic approaches and policies for the present and the future.