What, exactly, is the National Debt-and to whom do we owe the money-two trillion dollars’ worth? That's a pile of one thousand dollar bills 134 miles high, and climbing. Just paying the interest costs is equivalent to the entire federal income tax collected west of the Mississippi. How did we get into such a fix? This book explains why the government, politicians of both parties, and all the rest of us have delayed putting our house in order; how...

How do metropolitan regions remain prosperous and competitive in a rapidly changing economy? Using hard data, Matthew Drennan shows that those regions that have invested heavily in the information economy have done much better than those that continue to rely on manufacturing and industry as their base. Moreover, he contends, the benefits of that growth reach the urban working poor, earlier reports to the contrary notwithstanding. The Information...

Paul Osterman is Professor of Human Resources and Management at the Sloan School, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of Getting Started: The Youth Labor Market and Employment Futures: Reorganization, Dislocation, and Public Policy. He has cowritten and edited several other books and written numerous articles on topics such as labor market policy, job training programs, economic development, anti-poverty programs, and the organization...