An against-the-grain polemic in American capitalism from New York Times bestselling author Tyler Cowen.

We want to hate the 800-pound gorilla. Walmart and Amazon damage communities and smaller businesses. Facebook converts us into addicts while placing our personal data at risk. From skeptical politicians like Bernie Sanders who, at a 2016 presidential marketing campaign rally said, “If a bank is too big to fail, it really is too big to exist,” to millennials, only 42 percent of whom support capitalism, perception in about Big Business: A Love Letter for an American Anti-Hero big business is at an all-time low. But are big businesses inherently evil? If business is so bad, why does it remain therefore integral to the essential functioning of America? Economist and bestselling writer Tyler Cowen says our biggest problem is that people don’t love business enough.

In Big Business, Cowen puts forth an impassioned defense of corporations and their important role within a balanced, productive, and progressive society. He dismantles common misconceptions and untangles conflicting intuitions. According to a 2016 Gallup study, only 12 percent of Americans trust big business “quite a bit,” and only 6 percent trust it “a great deal.” Yet Americans as an organization are remarkably ready to trust businesses, whether in the form of buying a brand-new phone on your day of its discharge or simply showing up to function in the expectation they will be paid. Cowen illuminates the crucial part businesses play in spurring technology, rewarding skill and effort, and creating the bounty which we’ve all come to depend.