Alperovitz is a distinguished lecturer with the American Historical Society, co-founded the Democracy Collaborative and co-chairs its Next System Project with James Gustav Speth.

[1] He was awarded a Marshall scholarship to pursue a Ph.D. in political economy at the London School of Economics, later transferring to Cambridge University to study under theoretical economist Joan Robinson, who served as his doctoral thesis adviser.

Drawing on the diaries of Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, the work argued that after Germany's defeat, U.S. policymakers based their strategy toward the Soviet Union on the judgment that the atomic bomb, once demonstrated, would provide leverage in negotiating the postwar world order.

Alperovitz also reported that, at the time, there was substantial but not definitive evidence suggesting that gaining diplomatic leverage against the Soviet Union was a major consideration in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[5] The book, published as the Vietnam War generated increasing public concern, became a focal point in the debate over the direction of American foreign policy in the mid- and late 1960s.

He holds that the architecture of both suffers from centralized power that fails to support liberty, equality, ecological sustainability, genuine participatory democracy, and community.

Regional scaling of larger public enterprises and longer-term political decentralization are proposed as ways to transform and displace extractive elements of financialized corporate capitalism.

A nationwide campaign led by national religious leaders put the Youngstown effort on the map, and with Alperovitz's help, the coalition secured support from the Carter administration's Department of Housing and Urban Development for a sophisticated plan along with a pledge to provide loan guarantees.

A comprehensive study by a leading steel industry expert demonstrated that the community could feasibly reopen the mill under a worker-community ownership program after updating it with modern technology.

[14] After being appointed and serving for a year as Special Assistant to the U.S State Department, Alperovitz resigned his post discouraged by insider attempts to alter US war policy.

From 1966 to 1968, while a Fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics, Alperovitz played a role in the burgeoning antiwar movements coalescing in Cambridge at the time, developing the "Vietnam Summer" activism campaign centered on canvassing and teaching.

[15] The New Yorker at the time credited Alperovitz with devising the campaign's strategy, which sought to educate and agitate "undecideds and unaffiliated doves" into taking action against the war.

With Ellsberg in hiding, Alperovitz handled the logistics of handing off the papers to the press, adopting the moniker "Mr. Boston" when speaking to journalists and exercising great caution in planning elaborate handoffs.

"[16] In this work, Alperovitz investigates the role of the atomic bomb in shaping the formation of the U.S relationship with the Soviet Union and the makeup of the postwar international political order.

"[17] In this work, Alperovitz also presents substantive, although not definitive, evidence suggesting that top-level American civilian and military leaders knew the atomic bomb was not necessary to end World War II, but still used it to demonstrate strength vis-á-vis the Soviet Union.

Drawing upon a host of new evidence that had been declassified since the publication of Atomic Diplomacy, such as the diary of U.S. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, in this work Alperovitz offers what Harper's called "the most definitive account we are likely to see of why Hiroshima was destroyed, and how an official history justifying that decision was subsequently crafted and promulgated by the national security establishment.

"[18] He argues that the preponderance of evidence suggests that it was not military necessity but rather the U.S.'s geostrategic motives vis-à-vis the Soviet Union that most influenced Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan.

"[20] Alperovitz offers a remedy in the form of grassroots experiments currently underway in thousands of U.S. communities, which he sees as precedents that popular movements can use to plant the seeds of the next, more democratic economy.