Around the block

In Around the Block, Tom Shachtman makes Adam Smith's "invisible hand" visible in the daily life of a number of small businesses in an ordinary middle-class block in New York City. Looking at the block's economic life over the course of a year, Shachtman explores the everyday tragedies and triumphs hidden from view behind shop windows and in offices overhead. Around the Block puts a human face on the challenges that businesses weather every day. We see how small business is integral to America's national health - responsible for job growth while it builds social ties in a country mired by polarization. And we see of what neighborhoods are made and how they grow and change and become part of our hopes for ourselves and our families. In this very human story about work and community, Tom Shachtman writes not the economics of textbooks and graphs but the stuff of our lives.