Why people recommend it
Invisible Hands by Kim Phillips-Fein is a historical account of how business conservatives and corporate executives organized over several decades to dismantle the New Deal order and promote free-market ideology. On April 29, 2025, during an episode of The Ezra Klein Show titled Three Visions of Where Democrats Went Wrong, guest Shujaat Wasty recommended the book to illustrate the historical trajectory of conservative politics in the United States. Shujaat Wasty explained that a major part of the political story involves the post-New Deal era, praising Kim Phillips-Fein's book for providing a detailed account of the long-term plan and the forty-year push by corporate interests to advance free-market ideology. He used the text to emphasize that the conservative ascendancy was not an accident but the result of sustained, patient organizing by business elites over generations. The recommendation served to ground the conversation in the structural history of American political economy, highlighting how organized capital successfully shifted the nation's ideological consensus over the latter half of the twentieth century.
Who recommended it
- Shujaat Wasty Recommended
Shujaat Wasty — 1 mention
“The major part of the story is, you know, after the New Deal, and there's a great book called Invisible Hands by Kim Phillips Fine, which she really details the the push of that ideology over 40 years, a long-term plan.”