Herbert Stein has long been noted for the objectivity, clarity, and wit of his writing on the American economy. Millions of people have been reading, enjoying and learning from his articles in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and, most recently, Slate magazine on the Internet. Now, after sixty-five years as a student, teacher, presidential adviser, and commentator, he has collected his latest observations on the past and the present of the American economy and on his own life and times.

"I am amazed these days," writes Stein, "to think of how much history has occurred in the eighty-one years of my lifetime. To anyone who has lived through a significant part of those years, their horror is vividly recalled by a listing of place names--Auschwitz, Dresden, Lubyanka, Gulag, Shanghai, Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia. But that was only one side of the story," he asserts. "There is also a story of increasing freedom, equality, and material well-being, a testament to the conscience and creativity of mankind." Stein opines that "more progress was made in these eighty-one years than in all previous history to bring to reality the American proposition that all men--and not only all men but all men and women of all races, religions, and ethnicities--are created equal."

In this witty, accessible volume with essays ranging from "A Primer on Pay and Productivity" to "An Old Couch Potato’s Lament," Stein discourses about the state of the economy, the budget and taxes, history, and politics and offers personal observations.

Herbert Stein was a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers from 1969 to 1974 and the chairman from 1972 to 1974. He is the A. Willis Robertson Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Virginia and a senior fellow at AEI.