A Summer to Die

Lois Lowry is known for her versatility and invention as a writer. She was born in Hawaii and grew up in New York, Pennsylvania, and Japan. After several years at Brown University, she turned to her family and to writing. She is the author of more than thirty books for young adults, including the popular Anastasia Krupnik series. She has received countless honors, among them the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award, the California Young Reader's Medal, and the Mark Twain Award. She received Newbery Medals for two of her novels, NUMBER THE STARS and THE GIVER. Her first novel, A SUMMER TO DIE, was awarded the International Reading Association's Children'

great theorist of the free market believed in Providence. "The happiness of

mankind," Smith wrote, "seems to have been the original purpose intended by

the Author of nature." The workings of the Lord could be found not in the

pages of a holy book, nor in miracles, but in the daily, mundane buying-and-

selling of the marketplace. Each purchase might be driven by an individual

desire, but behind them all lay "the invisible hand" of the Divine. This invisible

hand set prices and wages. It determined supply and demand. It represented

the sum of all human wishes. Without relying on any conscious intervention

by man, the free market improved agriculture and industry, created surplus

wealth, and made sure that the things being produced were the things people

wanted to buy. Human beings lacked the wisdom, Smith felt, to improve

society deliberately or to achieve Progress through some elaborate plan. But

if every man pursued his own self-interest and obeyed only his "passions,"

the invisible hand would guarantee that everybody else benefited, too.

Published in 1776, The Wealth of Nations later had a profound

effect upon the nation born that year. The idea that "life, liberty, and the

pursuit of happiness" were unalienable rights, endowed by a Creator, fit

perfectly with the economic theories of Adam Smith. "Life, liberty and estate"

was the well-known phrase that Thomas Jefferson amended slightly for the

Declaration of Independence. The United States was the first country to

discard feudal and aristocratic traditions and replace them with a republican

devotion to marketplace ideals. More than two centuries later, America"s

leading companies—General Motors, General Electric, ExxonMobil,

Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Boeing, et al.—have annual revenues larger than those

of many sovereign states. No currency is more powerful than the U.S. dollar,

and the closing prices on Wall Street guide the financial markets of Tokyo,

London, Paris, and Frankfurt. The unsurpassed wealth of the United States

has enabled it to build a military without rival. And yet there is more to the

U.S. economy, much more, than meets the eye. In addition to America"s

famous corporations and brands, the invisible hand has also produced a

largely invisible economy, secretive and well hidden, with its own labor

demand, price structure, and set of commodities.

"Black," "shadow," "irregular," "informal," "illegal," "subterranean," "u