Michael Tomasky traces the history of progressive economic thinking that challenges the dominant assumption that prosperity trickles down from the wealthy to everyone else. He follows economists and policymakers who have argued instead that growth comes from the middle out, from consumer spending power, from workers with money to buy goods, and from investment in the broad population rather than concentration of wealth at the top. The book recovers a tradition of economic thinking marginalized during decades of free-market orthodoxy but now returning to influence. Tomasky profiles contemporary economists developing rigorous alternatives to trickle-down theory, showing how their research demonstrates that inequality actually hampers growth while broadly shared prosperity enhances it. He examines how these ideas have influenced policy debates in the Biden administration and beyond. The book combines intellectual history with contemporary reporting, tracing how economic ideas move from academic journals through think tanks to political platforms. Tomasky writes as a journalist making economic arguments accessible while maintaining fidelity to the underlying research. The result is both history of ideas and argument for alternative economic policies grounded in that history.