For well over a century now, American capitalism has moved from crisis to crisis—from the ruthless competition that drove worker unrest in the Gilded Age through the horrors of the Great Depression to the present, when the deadly twins of globalization and financialization have brought frightening instability to nearly everyone on the planet. United States of Emergency traces that crisis-laden history to reveal the key structural and political vulnerabilities of capitalism. Alan Nasser brings a lifetime of study to the subject, arguing that the current instability should be seen as only the most recent movement in an ongoing dialectic of crisis and response; by understanding the history of the system and its vulnerabilities, he shows, we can begin to see our way to a potential post-capitalist future. Rooted in research, but not afraid to be polemical, United States of Emergency is a landmark work, a powerful reckoning with capitalism’s checkered history and uncertain present.