330: Tropic of Hopes by Henry Knight

330.9759: Knight, Henry. Tropic of Hopes: California, Florida, and the Selling of American Paradise, 1869-1929. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2013. 198 pp. ISBN 978-0-8130-4481-1.

Dewey Breakdown:

• 300: Social Sciences
• 330: Economics
• 330.9: History
• +759: Florida

After the Civil War, the United States tried many different methods to re-unify its broken landscape and bolster the economy. While the gold rushes of the 1840s and 1850s helped to pull people to the hills of California, that particular strategy was wearing thin during the antebellum years. The completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 changed things, however. Folks could go from coast to coast in a matter of days, not weeks or months. Travels guides and boosterism became the main method for garnering interest in the two coastal states of California and Florida. Henry Knight’s Tropic of Hopes investigates the history and outcomes of the promotion of these two states.

334: Food Co-ops in America by Anne Meis Knupfer

334.6816640973: Knupfer, Anne Meis. Food Co-Ops in America: Communities, Consumption, and Economic Democracy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013. 264 pp. ISBN 978-0-8014-5114-0.

Dewey Breakdown:

• 300: Social Sciences
• 330: Economics
• 334: Cooperatives
• 334.6: Producers’ cooperatives
• 334.68: By industry
• 334.681: Producers’ cooperatives in industries other than extractive, manufacturing, or construction
• +664: Food technology
• +0973: United States

A food co-operative is a grocery store that is owned collectively by its members. They pool together their resources in an attempt to ensure that their food can be bought and sold for a reasonable price to the public at large while at the same time securing profits for its owners. Even though it seems like food co-ops are a relatively new phenomenon, they have been around in American culture for quite a long time. Anne Meis Knupfer, in Food Co-ops in America, traces the American food co-operative association from its roots in the 1830s to the present day.

332: Building Home by Eric John Abrahamson

332.32092: Abrahamson, Eric John. Building Home: Howard F. Ahmanson and the Politics of the American Dream. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012. 269 pp. ISBN 978-0-520-27375-7.

Dewey Breakdown:

• 300: Social Sciences
• 330: Economics
• 332: Financial economics
• 332.3: Credit and loan institutions
• 332.32: Savings and loan associations
• +092: Biography

That’s right, folks: this is a book about the life of an insurance salesman. Year after year, we see Hollywood glamorize the life of the intrepid peddler of policies, each movie more fantastic than the next. How can a dusty book even hope to rise to such an occasion? I jest, of course, but there was a time in America where the savings and loan associations were king, when home-building and suburbia blossomed into the epitome of the America dream. And Harold F. Ahmanson (1906-1968), the son of a Scandinavian businessman from Omaha, was on the people in the center of entire enterprise. Eric John Abrahamson’s Building Home tells his tale.

331: Behind the Kitchen Door by Saru Jayaraman

331.761647950973: Jayaraman, Saru. Behind the Kitchen Door. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 2013. 191 pp. ISBN 978-0-8014-5172-0.

Dewey Breakdown:

• 300: Social Sciences
• 330: Economics
• 331: Labor economics
• 331.7: Labor economics by industry and occupation
• 331.76: Specific industries and occupations
• 331.761: Industries and occupations other than extractive, manufacturing, or construction
• +647.95: Management of eating and drinking places
• +0973: United States

I am guilty of a crime. It’s mostly a crime of omission or ignorance, but it is an offense nonetheless. When I go out to a restaurant, I have never concerned myself with whether the establishment has fair management or hiring practices. I never bother to find out whether anybody working that day is sick and had to come to work for fear of losing pay or their job entirely. I hardly notice that skin color tends to get darker as you approach the back of the house. But Saru Jayaraman has. Her book Behind the Kitchen Door and her organization (the Restaurant Opportunity Centers United) try to lift the veil surrounding food service workers in order to make the entire world of outside-the-home dining sustainable for all, from the food vendors to the workers to management, and even to the customer.

336: Austerity by Mark Blyth

336: Blyth, Mark. Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013. 197 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-989798-8.

Dewey Breakdown:

• 300: Social Sciences
• 330: Economics
• 336: Public finance

My favorite thing about reading occurs when I do not understand a concept. I read a book about it and then, magically, knowledge appears. This is perhaps a clichéd notion, but it still makes me feel good about reading. By no stretch of the imagination will I be able to teach a course in economics after this one, but when I hear radio and news reports of the economic landscape, I should be able to follow them with a little more understanding. Mark Blyth’s Austerity is a book really about three related things: convoluted economic instruments and how their interrelatedness sparked the current global downturn, the history of austerity as a way to alter a country’s financial standing, and how the clarion call for austerity measures in economically weak European countries is perhaps the wrong thing to do.

339: Scroogenomics by Joel Waldfogel

339.47: Waldfogel, Joel. Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn’t Buy Presents for the Holidays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009. 146 pp. ISBN 978-0-691-14264-7.

Dewey Construction:

• 300: Social Sciences
• 330: Economics
• 339: Macroeconomics and related topics
• 339.4: Factors affecting income and wealth
• 339.47: Consumption or spending

There are a lot of people out there who decry the wasteful spending by the developed world on the holidays. Joel Waldfogel is apparently one of them. In Scroogenomics, we hopes to convince readers to not buy presents for people for Christmas. Here’s why.

338: Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba by Tom Gjelten

338.766359097291: Gjelten, Tom. Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause. New York: Penguin, 2008. 365 pp. ISBN 978-0-14-311632-5.

Books in DDC section 338 are notorious for having long Dewey numbers. The 330s are economics, and 338 is specifically “Production.” Any company that makes something falls under here, and that’s just about half of them (the other half are service companies). 338.7 is “business enterprises,” or what everyone else calls companies. 338.76 starts the “business enterprises by industry”. Then things get interesting—you have to go find the Dewey number for the product that the company makes and attach it. In this case, rum is 663.59, so the number now becomes 338.766359. Since this book is about a rum company specific to the island of Cuba, you can tack on the geographical marker, which is -097291. And voila, a book about a rum-producing business enterprise in Cuba.