Steve Fraser

Steve Fraser’s research and writing have pursued two main lines of inquiry: labor history and the history of American capitalism. His first book, The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order (1989), co-edited with Gary Gerstle, examines the relationship between the New Deal and the rise of the modern labor movement.

In 1993, he published, Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor, which won the Philip Taft Prize for the best book in labor history. His later works, including Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life (2005) and Wall Street: America’s Dream Palace (2008) explore the ways in which American society and culture reacted to the presence of powerful economic elites.

Fraser currently teaches at Columbia University and has taught at Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania and New York University. He has also worked as an editor for Cambridge University Press, Basic Books and Houghton Mifflin. Fraser is a co-founder, with Tom Engelhardt, of the American Empire Project, a book series that wrestles with questions of America’s place on the international stage, casting a harsh light on imperialistic foreign policies.

Fraser’s book, "The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power," tells the story of “the rise of American capitalism, the visionary attempts to protect the democratic commonwealth and the great surrender to today’s delusional fables of freedom and the politics of fear.”