At some point, someone must have believed in the adage that "a rising tide lifts all boats." But the recent economic boom has been more of a hurricane for those unskilled workers living on the least seaworthy craft. While wealth escalates, the economic expectancy of the poorest people around the world just gets worse, bringing to mind Adam Smith"s famous assertion that "for one very rich man, there must be at least 500 poor." This brings up one of the oldest questions of society and economics: Why should the rich and the middle classes care about the poor? Because, as Ethan Kapstein argues in Sharing the Wealth, when they don"t, bad things happen. Very bad things. In fact, it can be argued that the mass changes of the Industrial Revolution in Western economies during the 19th century led to the major upheavals of the 20th: World War I, the Russian revolution, the Great Depression, World War II. It"s now fashionable to assume that the American welfare state, begun with the New Deal and steadily expanded until recently, was the root of many of society"s problems. But Kapstein argues that the social safety nets of government programs actually made American prosperity possible in the 20th century (as it did in European societies going back to the 16th century). And, conversely, that a return to 19th-century-style economic Darwinism would halt that prosperity. Kapstein believes we need a global economy. His concern, though, is for the workers whose lives are affected by these shifts. While Sharing the Wealth is an academic work, Kapstein"s passion for his thesis is clear on every page. There"s something here for any reader interested in business, politics, history, or economics. --Lou Schuler