From the shuttered factories of the rust belt to the look-alike strip malls of the sun belt - and almost everywhere in between - America has been transformed by its relentless fixation on low price. This pervasive yet little examined obsession is arguably the most powerful and devastating market force of our time - the engine of globalization, outsourcing, planned obsolescence, and economic instability in an increasingly unsettled world.

Low price is so alluring that we may have forgotten how thoroughly we once distrusted it.
Ellen Ruppel Shell traces the birth of the bargain as we know it from the Industrial Revolution to the assembly line and beyond, homing in on a number of colorful characters, such as Gene Verkauf (his name is Yiddish for "to sell"), ... more

There are companies that create waves and those that ride or are drowned by them. This is a ride on the Google wave, and the fullest account of how it formed and crashed into traditional media businesses. With unprecedented access to Google's founders and executives, as well as to those in media who are struggling to keep their heads above water, Ken Auletta reveals how the industry is being disrupted and redefined. On one level Auletta uses Google as a stand-in for the digital revolution as a whole - and goes inside Google's closed door meetings, introducing Google's notoriously private founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as those who work with - and against - them.
In Googled, the reader discovers the 'secret sauce' of the company's success and why the worlds of 'new' and 'old' media often communicate as if residents of different planets. It may send chills down ... more