Description: 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 the shop windows and in offices.

Behind the abstractions of economists, a single block in the Chelsea section of Manhattan is the stage for the personal commitments and risks of small business -- a father commits suicide so that his business can avoid bankruptcy; a Korean liquor store owner finds himself caught between two worlds; a computer-game programmer leaves her job and risks her career for an idea of her own.

Shachtman 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 building social ties in a country mired by polarization. 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.

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