Michael Genovese – författare

Attacks against the pursuit of profit in eighteenth-century Britain have been largely read as reactions against market activity in general or as critiques of financial innovation.  In  The Problem of Profit, however, Michael Genovese contends that such rejections of profit derive not from a distaste for moneymaking itself but from a distaste for individualism.

In the aftermath of the late seventeenth-century Financial Revolution, literature linked the concept of sympathy to the public-minded economic ideals of the past to resist the rising individualism of capitalism. This study places literary works at the center of eighteenth-century debates about how to harmonize exchanges of feeling and exchanges of finance, highlighting representations of communitarian, affective profit-making in georgic poetry as well as in the work of Joseph Addison, Daniel Defoe, Richard Steele, Sarah Fielding, Henry Fielding, David Hume, Samuel Johnson, and Laurence Sterne, among others. Investigating commercial treatises, novels, poetry, periodicals, and philosophy, Genovese argues that authors conjured alternatives to private accumulation that might counter the isolating tendencies of impersonal exchange.

However, even as emotional language and economic language arose together in the 1700s, the attendant aspiration to form a communitarian economy in Britain was not fulfilled. By recovering an approach to moneymaking that failed to thrive,  The Problem of Profit argues for the relevance of an unfamiliar narrative of capitalistic thought to today’s anxiety over the discord between personal ambition and public good.

The American public hungers for a heroic leader. From John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush, every American president has left office either under a cloud or as a failed leader. Michael A. Genovese argues that presidents are set up for failure; it is not specific presidents but the presidency itself that is the problem.

The presidency was designed to prevent tyranny through a system of separation of powers that inhibits presidents from exercising sufficient power to meet the demands and expectations that developed over time. Each new president dreams of success, only to be crushed by the paralytic weight of vetoes and roadblocks. As they fail to meet expectations, Americans turn on them, making their already precarious position much worse. Given the perilous nature of the office, Genovese examines the skills required to achieve success and the roles of power and persuasion. He also examines how globalization and the rapid pace of change contribute to the decline of presidential power.

This accessible synthesis of scholarship is geared toward an audience that is hungry to unravel the dilemmas of presidential leadership. Students of the presidency will find it insightful; general readers will find it illuminating.

The American public hungers for a heroic leader. From John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush, every American president has left office either under a cloud or as a failed leader. Michael A. Genovese argues that presidents are set up for failure; it is not specific presidents but the presidency itself that is the problem.

The presidency was designed to prevent tyranny through a system of separation of powers that inhibits presidents from exercising sufficient power to meet the demands and expectations that developed over time. Each new president dreams of success, only to be crushed by the paralytic weight of vetoes and roadblocks. As they fail to meet expectations, Americans turn on them, making their already precarious position much worse. Given the perilous nature of the office, Genovese examines the skills required to achieve success and the roles of power and persuasion. He also examines how globalization and the rapid pace of change contribute to the decline of presidential power.

This accessible synthesis of scholarship is geared toward an audience that is hungry to unravel the dilemmas of presidential leadership. Students of the presidency will find it insightful; general readers will find it illuminating.