Americana

Praise

“A delightful tour through the businesses and industries that turned America into the biggest economy in the world. Not only is the book written in a light and informative style, it is cleverly constructed. . . . There is plenty of surprising detail. . . . An excellent book.”—The Economist

“The historical parallels his work provokes are striking and illustrative, and modern innovators would benefit from looking more closely at how the past may inform their future.”— Quartz

“Bhu Srinivasan is an expert storyteller who deftly navigates the history of American innovation. In a world preoccupied with Zuckerberg and Musk, he tells a series of bite-size narratives that are individually digestible yet comprehensive in their survey of capitalism, from that of ferry-captain Cornelius Vanderbilt to that of Samuel Morse, portrait-painter-turned-telegraph-inventor. Painting the backdrop of four centuries of ingenuity, he reminds us how far America has come. A great book.”—Scott Hartley, venture capitalist and author of The Fuzzy and the Techie

“In Americana, Bhu Srinivasan ranges widely and insightfully through the long, tangled history of capitalism and democracy in America. Provocative and lucid, Americana deserves and rewards attention from citizens, present and future, of our troubled yet alluring nation.”—Alan Taylor, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Internal Enemy

“A wonderfully readable and entertaining panorama of the innovators and entrepreneurs who have shaped our history. Lively and original, brimming with surprising details and full of brilliant insights, this is narrative history at its best.”—Liaquat Ahamed, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Lords of Finance

“A colorful, engaging, and incisive account of the evolving varieties of American capitalism told through the new technologies that drove it forward, the ideas that shaped it, the institutions that enabled it, the goods it produced, and the people who made and resisted it. It is a book that is both personal and historically sweeping.”—Richard White, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Railroaded

“[Srinivasan] is particularly insightful on cycles of technological revolution, as with Andrew Carnegie’s innovations as a steel baron and the rise of the automobile industry. . . . Spryly and with just the right amount of circumstantial detail, Srinivasan places all this against the context of his own history in America. . . . A smart, accessible contribution to the nation’s economic history.”—Kirkus

“An informative, fluently written history. . . . An intelligent survey of U.S. business history. . . accessible to a wide audience.”—Library Journal