This illuminating book offers a compact survey and new interpretation of trends and policies in the US economy from the end of the nineteenth century to the initial period of the Trump administration. The author maps three stages in this period of US economic history: first, the economic and demographic consequences of the frontier; second, the Fordist model of growth; and third, the attempt to build an economic empire through economic and financial globalization, military and political power and rapid technological progress. Examining pivotal moments from the Wall Street Crash and the World Wars to the recent Great Recession, Obamacare and Trump's electoral promises and first controversial decisions, this book is essential reading for all those interested in American economic power and its future. It uses a comparative development economic approach - not a detailed economic history, but a reasoned survey of the pivotal points in US economic development. It presents new interpretative tools, such as flow charts regarding the economic consequences of the frontier, the Fordist model of growth, and the stock-flow relations that heavily contributed to the Great Recession of 2008-9Shows the shifts in global power occurring from 1870 to 2017 and the changing roleplayed by the United States in the international arena. The book outlines the main sources of strength and of weakness of the US economy and their changes over time; includes an in-depth analysis of the Great Depression and of the recent Great Recession; examines the widening of economic inequalities since the 1980s; compares the economic policies of Obama and Trump; and takes an �outsider-looking-in' approach from an American-trained, leading Italian academic in comparative economics.