New Books in Economic and Business History

Peter Good, "The East India Company in Persia: Trade and Cultural Exchange in the Eighteenth Century" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

10 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 1747, the city of Kerman in Persia burned amidst chaos, destruction and death perpetrated by the city's own overlord, Nader Shah. After the violent...

Ryan Tucker Jones, "Red Leviathan: The Secret History of Soviet Whaling" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

09 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Soviet Union killed over six hundred thousand whales in the twentieth century, many of them illegally and secretly. That catch helped bring many w...

Chris Yogerst, "The Warner Brothers" (UP of Kentucky, 2023)

08 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

One of the oldest and most recognizable studios in Hollywood, Warner Bros. is considered a juggernaut of the entertainment industry. Since its formati...

Christian O. Paiz, "The Strikers of Coachella: A Rank-And-File History of the UFW Movement" (UNC Press, 2023)

08 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The past decades have borne witness to the United Farm Workers' (UFW) tenacious hold on the country's imagination. Since 2008, the UFW has lent its ra...

The Ideology of Entrepreneurship: A Conversation with Robert Eberhart

28 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Robert Eberhart, Associate Professor of Management and Faculty Director of International Business at the University of San Diego, talks about his work...

Kalyani Ramnath, "Boats in a Storm: Law, Migration, and Decolonization in South and Southeast Asia, 1942-1962" (Stanford UP, 2023)

27 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For more than a century before World War II, traders, merchants, financiers, and laborers steadily moved between places on the Indian Ocean, trading g...

Jeremy Black, "Why the Industrial Revolution Happened in Britain" (Amberley Publishing, 2023)

26 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Jeremy Black about his new book Why the Industrial Revolution Happened in Britain (Amberley Publishing, 2023). Britain's key impo...

Lucia Carminati. "Seeking Bread and Fortune in Port Said: Labor Migration and the Making of the Suez Canal, 1859-1906" (U California Press, 2023)

24 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Lucia Carminati's book Seeking Bread and Fortune in Port Said: Labor Migration and the Making of the Suez Canal, 1859-1906 (U California Press, 2023...

Outside the Box: The History and Future of Globalization

21 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Economist, historian, and author Marc Levinson talks about his book, Outside the Box: How Globalization Changed from Moving Stuff to Spreading Ideas ...

Ulbe Bosma, "The World of Sugar: How the Sweet Stuff Transformed Our Politics, Health, and Environment Over 2,000 Years" (Harvard UP, 2023)

20 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For most of history, humans did without refined sugar. After all, it serves no necessary purpose in our diets, and extracting it from plants takes har...

Roma Agrawal, "Nuts and Bolts: Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World (in a Big Way)" (Norton, 2023)

19 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Smartphones, skyscrapers, spacecraft. Modern technology seems mind-bogglingly complex. But beneath the surface, it can be beautifully simple. In Nuts...

Diane Purkiss, "English Food: A Social History of England Told Through the Food on Its Tables (William Collins, 2022)

18 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A rich and indulgent history, English Food: A Social History of England Told Through the Food on Its Tables (William Collins, 2022) by Dr. Diane Pur...

Don J. Wyatt, "Slavery in East Asia" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

17 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Don J. Wyatt about his book Slavery in East Asia (Cambridge UP, 2022). In premodern China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, just as in t...

Nicholas Hoover Wilson, "Modernity's Corruption: Empire and Morality in the Making of British India" (Columbia UP, 2023)

17 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When Robert Clive, the man who established Company rule in India was hauled in front of Parliament to answer for crimes of corruption, he allegedly re...

Bobby J. Smith II, "Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement" (UNC Press, 2023)

16 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Bobby J. Smith II's book Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement (UNC Press, 2023 )unearths a food story burie...

Benjamin Y. Fong, "Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge" (Verso, 2023)

15 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Benjamin Y. Fong is author of the new book Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge, which was just released in July,...

The Future Was Here: The Commodore Amiga

14 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Long ago, in 1985, personal computers came in two general categories: the friendly, childish game machine used for fun (exemplified by Atari and Commo...

Yiwen Li, "Networks of Faith and Profit: Monks, Merchants, and Exchanges Between China and Japan, 839-1403 CE" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

13 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In her book, Networks of Faith and Profit: Monks, Merchants, and Exchanges Between China and Japan, 839-1403 CE (Cambridge UP, 2023), associate prof...

Charlotte Karem Albrecht, "Possible Histories: Arab Americans and the Queer Ecology of Peddling" (U California Press, 2023)

11 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Many of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who immigrated to the US beginning in the 1870s worked as peddlers. Men were able to transgress Syrian no...

Chris Wiggins and Matthew L Jones, "How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms" (Norton, 2023)

10 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From facial recognition―capable of checking people into flights or identifying undocumented residents―to automated decision systems that inform wh...

Vaudine England, "Fortune's Bazaar: The Making of Hong Kong" (Scribner, 2023)

10 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The legacy of the businessmen who built Hong Kong are all over the city. Bankers work in Chater House—named after Paul Chater, the Armenian business...

Elizabeth Humphrys, "How Labour Built Neoliberalism: Australia's Accord, the Labour Movement and the Neoliberal Project" (Haymarket, 2019)

09 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Why do we always assume it was the New Right that was at the centre of constructing neoliberalism? How might corporatism have advanced neoliberalism? ...

Wendy A. Woloson, "Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America" (U Chicago Press, 2020)

09 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Why are our lives filled with so much stuff? In Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America (U Chicago Press, 2023), Wendy Woloson, Professor and C...

Stevan Harrell, "An Ecological History of Modern China" (U Washington Press, 2023)

08 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Is environmental degradation an inevitable result of economic development? Can ecosystems be restored once government officials and the public are com...

Frank Jacob, "Wallerstein 2.0: Thinking and Applying World-Systems Theory in the 21st Century" (Transcript Publishing, 2022)

08 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Immanuel Wallerstein's world-systems theory can help to better understand and describe developments of the 21st century. The contributors of Wallerst...

Steven Press, "Blood and Diamonds: Germany's Imperial Ambitions in Africa" (Harvard UP, 2021)

08 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Since the late 1990s, activists have campaigned to remove "conflict diamonds" from jewelry shops and department stores. But if the problem of conflict...

Richard C. Hoffmann, "The Catch: An Environmental History of Medieval European Fisheries" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

07 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Catch: An Environmental History of Medieval European Fisheries (Cambridge UP, 2023) provides a comprehensive examination of European engagement w...

Philip Roscoe, "How to Build a Stock Exchange: The Past, Present and Future of Finance" (Bristol UP, 2023)

07 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Why does the financial sector matter? In How to Build a Stock Exchange: The Past, Present and Future of Finance (Bristol UP, 2023), Philip Roscoe, ...

Yiannis Kokosalakis, "Building Socialism: The Communist Party and the Making of the Soviet System, 1921–1941" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

06 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

By placing the party grassroots at the centre of its focus, Yiannis Kokosalakis' book Building Socialism: The Communist Party and the Making of the S...

Mike Rothschild, "Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories" (Melville House, 2023)

06 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories (Melville House, 2023), Mike Rothschild delves into the history of the ...

Ryan C. Smith, "The Real Oil Shock: How Oil Transformed Money, Debt, and Finance" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)

06 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The rise of the global financial industry is treated by many economists as a critical component of the rise of neoliberalism. What few address is the ...

Cindy McCulligh, "Sewer of Progress: Corporations, Institutionalized Corruption, and the Struggle for the Santiago River" (MIT Press, 2023)

06 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For almost two decades, the citizens of Western Mexico have called for a cleanup of the Santiago River, a water source so polluted it emanates an over...

Erika Marie Bsumek, "The Foundations of Glen Canyon Dam: Infrastructures of Dispossession on the Colorado Plateau" (U Texas Press, 2023)

06 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River provides electricity for some forty million people, and is one of the largest sources of water in the Ameri...

Alejandro Portes and Ariel C. Armony, "Emerging Global Cities: Origin, Structure, and Significance" (Columbia UP, 2022)

05 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Certain cities—most famously New York, London, and Tokyo—have been identified as “global cities,” whose function in the world economy transcen...

Christine Keiner, "Deep Cut: Science, Power, and the Unbuilt Interoceanic Canal" (U Georgia Press, 2020)

05 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Atlantic-Pacific Central American sea-level canal is generally regarded as a spectacular failure. However, Deep Cut: Science, Power, and the Unbu...

Olga Fedorenko, "Flower of Capitalism: South Korean Advertising at a Crossroads" (U Hawaii Press, 2022)

05 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

An ethnography of advertising in postmillennial South Korea, Flower of Capitalism: South Korean Advertising at a Crossroads (U Hawaii Press, 2022) d...

Logistic Clusters: Delivering Value and Driving Growth

03 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Why is Memphis home to hundreds of motor carrier terminals and distribution centers? Why does the tiny island-nation of Singapore handle a fifth of th...

Nicholas Lemann, "Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream" (FSG, 2019)

02 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Nicholas Lemann is a staff writer at the New Yorker and a professor of journalism at Columbia. He is the author of four books, the most recent of whic...

Colleen M. Grogan, "Grow and Hide: The History of America's Health Care State" (Oxford UP, 2023)

02 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A sweeping history of the American health care state that reveals the public has been intentionally misled about the true role of government. The US g...

Blair Kelley, "Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class" (LIveright, 2023)

31 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the United States, the stoicism and importance of the “working class” is part of the national myth. The term is often used to conjure the contr...

Powering American Farms: A Conversation with Richard Hirsh

31 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Richard Hirsh, Professor of History at Virginia Tech, talks about his book, Powering American Farms: The Overlooked Origins of Rural Electrification ...

Manfred B. Steger and Ravi K. Roy, "Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2021)

30 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Anchored in the principles of free-market economics, neoliberalism emerged in the 1990s as the world's most dominant economic paradigm. It has been as...

Tom Young, "Unmaking the East India Company: British Art and Political Reform in Colonial India, c. 1813-1858" (Paul Mellon Centre, 2023)

29 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Unmaking the East India Company: British Art and Political Reform in Colonial India, c. 1813-1858 (Paul Mellon Centre, 2023) by Dr. Tom Young illumin...

Richard N. Langlois, "The Corporation and the Twentieth Century: The History of American Business Enterprise" (Princeton UP, 2023)

27 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The twentieth century was the managerial century in the United States. An organizational transformation, from entrepreneurial to managerial capitalism...

The Texas Two-Step and Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Powder

26 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What’s safer than baby powder? Parents have been trusting Johnson & Johnson for over 100 years to powder their baby’s bottoms. Yet, numerous studi...

Vincanne Adams, "Glyphosate and the Swirl: An Agroindustrial Chemical on the Move" (Duke UP, 2023)

25 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Vincanne Adams's book Glyphosate and the Swirl: An Agroindustrial Chemical on the Move (Duke UP, 2023) is part of a broader trend in anthropology th...

The Future of Supply Chains: A Discussion with Rob Handfield

25 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Supply chains matter. And one of the most compelling defences of the capitalist system is that for all its various dysfunctions, it does at least ensu...

US History in 15 Foods: A Conversation with Anna Zeide

24 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Anna Zeide, Associate Professor of History at Virginia Tech, talks about her book, US History in 15 Foods (Bloomsbury, 2023), with Peoples & Things ...

Ronan Bolton, "Making Energy Markets: The Origins of Electricity Liberalisation in Europe" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)

24 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ronan Bolton's book Making Energy Markets: The Origins of Electricity Liberalisation in Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) charts the emergence and ...

John M. Findlay, "The Mobilized American West, 1940-2000" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)

24 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

At the end of the 1930s, the West was in peril. A cultural and economic backwater, the Great Depression had all-but wiped out the extractive industri...

Thomas Piketty on Capitalism and Inequality (Adaner Usmani, JP)

20 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Is Thomas Piketty the world’s most famous economic historian ? A superstar enemy of plutocratic capitalism who wrote a pathbreaking bestseller, C...

Victor Luckerson, "Built from the Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa's Greenwood District, America's Black Wall Street" (Random House, 2023)

17 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When Ed Goodwin moved with his parents to Greenwood, Tulsa, in 1914, his family joined a growing community on the cusp of becoming a national center o...

Juliet Schor, "After the Gig: How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win It Back" (U California Press, 2021)

17 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When the "sharing economy" launched a decade ago, proponents claimed that it would transform the experience of work--giving earners flexibility, auton...

Victoria Lee, "The Arts of the Microbial World: Fermentation Science in Twentieth-Century Japan" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

16 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Victoria Lee’s The Arts of the Microbial World: Fermentation Science in Twentieth-Century Japan (U Chicago Press, 2021) is an in-depth exploration...

Meg Bernhard, "Wine" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

15 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Meg Bernhard about her new book Wine (Bloomsbury, 2023). Agricultural product and cultural commodity, drink of ritual and drink of...

Callie Wilkinson, "Empire of Influence: The East India Company and the Making of Indirect Rule" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

14 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Indirect rule is widely considered as a defining feature of the nineteenth and twentieth century British Empire but its divisive earlier history remai...

Marco Grasso, "From Big Oil to Big Green: Holding the Oil Industry to Account for the Climate Crisis" (MIT Press, 2022)

13 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In From Big Oil to Big Green: Holding the Oil Industry to Account for the Climate Crisis (MIT Press, 2022), Professor Marco Grasso examines the resp...

Randall Patnode, "The Synchronized Society: Time and Control From Broadcasting to the Internet" (Rutgers UP, 2023)

12 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Synchronized Society: Time and Control From Broadcasting to the Internet (Rutgers University Press, 2023) by Dr. Randall Patnode traces the histo...

Joseph Sassoon, "The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire" (Pantheon, 2022)

12 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Joseph Sassoon about his book The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire (Pantheon, 2022) They were one...

Anne Giblin Gedacht, "Tōhoku Unbounded: Regional Identity and the Mobile Subject in Prewar Japan" (Brill, 2022)

11 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Anne Giblin Gedacht’s Tōhoku Unbounded: Regional Identity and the Mobile Subject in Prewar Japan (Brill, 2022) centers cross-border mobility in i...

Palo Alto: A Conversation with Malcolm Harris

10 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This is the second Peoples & Things episode featuring a guest host. In this case, it is M. R. “Mols” Sauter, an assistant professor of information...

Jason Chang et al., "The Cargo Rebellion: Those Who Chose Freedom" (PM Press, 2022)

09 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Cargo Rebellion: Those Who Chose Freedom (PM Press, 2022) tells a true story of mutiny on the high seas in which four hundred indentured Chinese ...

Brent Cebul, "Illusions of Progress: Business, Poverty, and Liberalism in the American Century" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)

09 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today, the word "neoliberal" is used to describe an epochal shift toward market-oriented governance begun in the 1970s. Yet the roots of many of neoli...

Shortage

07 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of High Theory, Eram Alam talks with us about shortage. A political tool, rather than a natural lack, the concept of a shortage change...

Chris Desan on Making Money (Recall This Buck)

05 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Our Recall this Buck series, back in 2020 and 2021, explored the history of money, ranging from the earliest forms of labor IOUs to the modern world...

Chris Wickham, "The Donkey and the Boat: Reinterpreting the Mediterranean Economy, 950-1180" (Oxford UP, 2023)

03 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A new account of the Mediterranean economy in the 10th to 12th centuries, forcing readers to entirely rethink the underlying logic to medieval economi...

Jack Metzgar, "Bridging the Divide: Working-Class Culture in a Middle-Class Society" (ILR Press, 2021)

03 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Bridging the Divide: Working-Class Culture in a Middle-Class Society (ILR Press, 2021), Jack Metzgar attempts to determine the differences betwee...

Malcolm F. Purinton, "Globalization in a Glass: The Rise of Pilsner Beer through Technology, Taste and Empire" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

03 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Globalization in a Glass: The Rise of Pilsner Beer through Technology, Taste and Empire (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Dr. Malcolm Purinton charts the spread ...

Radhika Seshan and Ryuto Shimada, "Connecting the Indian Ocean World: Across Sea and Land" (Routledge, 2023)

02 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Indian Ocean world has a rich history of socio-economic and cultural exchanges across time and space. Connecting the Indian Ocean World Across S...

The Bubble Economy: Is Sustainable Growth Possible?

29 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The global economy has become increasingly, perhaps chronically, unstable. Since 2008, we have heard about the housing bubble, subprime mortgages, ban...

Daniel R. Smith, "The Fall and Rise of the English Upper Class: Houses, Kinship and Capital Since 1945" (Manchester UP, 2023)

28 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Who are the English upper class? In The Fall and Rise of the English Upper Class: Houses, Kinship and Capital Since 1945 (Manchester UP, 2023) Dani...

Nicholas Dagen Bloom, "The Great American Transit Disaster: A Century of Austerity, Auto-Centric Planning, and White Flight" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

27 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Many a scholar and policy analyst has lamented American dependence on cars and the corresponding lack of federal investment in public transportation t...

The Singer Sewing Machine in Spain and Mexico: Multinational Business, Gender, and Technologies

26 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Historian Paula de la Cruz-Fernandez talks about her book, Gendered Capitalism: Sewing Machines and Multinational Business in Spain and Mexico, 1850-...

Josh Shepperd, "Shadow of the New Deal: The Victory of Public Broadcasting" (U Illinois Press, 2023)

26 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Despite uncertain beginnings, public broadcasting emerged as a noncommercial media industry that transformed American culture. In Shadow of the New D...

Alan Bollard, "Economists at War: How a Handful of Economists Helped Win and Lose the World Wars" (Oxford UP, 2020)

26 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Wartime is not just about military success.  Economists at War: How a Handful of Economists Helped Win and Lose the World Wars (Oxford University ...

Philip J. Stern, "Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations That Built British Colonialism" (Harvard UP, 2023)

26 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Philip Stern places the corporation―more than the Crown―at the heart of British colonialism, arguing that companies built and governed global empi...

Marcello Musto, "The Last Years of Karl Marx: An Intellectual Biography" (Stanford UP, 2020)

26 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the last years of his life, Karl Marx expanded his research in new directions-studying recent anthropological discoveries, analyzing communal forms...

Make it New: A History of Silicon Valley Design

25 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

California's Silicon Valley is home to the greatest concentration of designers in the world: corporate design offices at flagship technology companies...

Craig Nelson, "V Is For Victory: Franklin Roosevelt's American Revolution and the Triumph of World War II" (Scribner, 2023)

24 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

As Nazi Germany began to conquer Europe, America’s military was unprepared, too small, and poorly supplied. The Nazis were supported by robust Germa...

The Outsourcer: The Story of India's IT Revolution

24 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The rise of the Indian information technology industry is a remarkable economic success story. Software and services exports from India amounted to le...

Stephanie Decker et al., "Handbook of Historical Methods for Management" (2023)

23 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode I met with the editors of the Elgar Publishing Handbook of Historical Methods for Management, Stephanie Decker, Professor of Strategy,...

Jean Pfaelzer, "California, a Slave State" (Yale UP, 2023)

23 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

California owes its origins and sunny prosperity to slavery. Spanish invaders captured Indigenous people to build the chain of Catholic missions. Russ...

David Cressy, "Shipwrecks and the Bounty of the Sea" (Oxford UP, 2022)

21 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Shipwrecks and the Bounty of the Sea (Oxford University Press, 2022), Dr. David Cressy is a work of social history examining community relationships,...

Richard Duncan, "The Money Revolution: How to Finance the Next American Century" (John Wiley & Sons, 2022)

21 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In The Money Revolution: How to Finance the Next American Century, economist and bestselling author Richard Duncan lays out a farsighted strategy to ...

The Future of Venture Capitalists: A Discussion with Sebastian Mallaby

20 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

By providing capital to back the ideas and efforts of others, venture capitalists can make absurd amounts of money. But there is another way of lookin...

The History of the American Shopping Mall and Its Cultures

19 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Writer and design critic Alexandra Lange talks about her book, Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Shopping Mall (Bloombury, 2023), w...

Keith Tribe, "Constructing Economic Science: The Invention of a Discipline 1850-1950" (Oxford UP, 2022)

18 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

During the late nineteenth century concerns about international commercial rivalry were often expressed in terms of national provision for training an...

Vera Keller, "The Interlopers: Early Stuart Projects and the Undisciplining of Knowledge" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)

17 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Many accounts of the scientific revolution portray it as a time when scientists disciplined knowledge by first disciplining their own behavior. Accord...

Lloyd Daniel Barba, "Sowing the Sacred: Mexican Pentecostal Farmworkers in California" (Oxford UP, 2022)

16 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Lloyd Daniel Barba's book Sowing the Sacred: Mexican Pentecostal Farmworkers in California (Oxford UP, 2022) traces the development of Pentecostalis...

Allan E. S. Lumba, "Monetary Authorities: Capitalism and Decolonization in the American Colonial Philippines" (Duke UP, 2022)

15 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Monetary Authorities: Capitalism and Decolonization in the American Colonial Philippines (Duke UP, 2022) investigates the ways in which racial and c...

J. P. Daughton, "In the Forest of No Joy: The Congo-Océan Railroad and the Tragedy of French Colonialism" (Norton, 2021)

13 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

J. P. Daughton's In the Forest of No Joy: The Congo-Océan Railroad and the Tragedy of French Colonialism (W. W. Norton, 2021) examines the complex...

Stephen G. Gross, "Energy and Power: Germany in the Age of Oil, Atoms, and Climate Change" (Oxford UP, 2023)

13 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Since the 1990s, Germany has embarked on a daring campaign to restructure its energy system around renewable power, sparking a global revolution in so...

Fredrik Albritton Jonsson and Carl Wennerlind, "Scarcity: A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis" (Harvard UP, 2023)

12 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Scarcity: A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis (Harvard UP, 2023) is a sweeping intellectual history of the concept of econ...

Jacqueline Beatty, "In Dependence: Women and the Patriarchal State in Revolutionary America" (NYU Press, 2023)

11 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Patriarchal forces of law, finance, and social custom restricted women’s rights and agency in revolutionary America. Yet women in this period exploi...

Kathryn Olivarius, "Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom" (Harvard UP, 2022)

10 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Disease is thought to be a great leveler of humanity, but in antebellum New Orleans acquiring immunity from the scourge of yellow fever magnified the ...

Amanda L. Van Lanen, "The Washington Apple: Orchards and the Development of Industrial Agriculture" (U Oklahoma Press, 2022)

09 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the nineteenth century, most American farms had a small orchard or at least a few fruit-bearing trees. People grew their own apple trees or purchas...

Anne L. Murphy, "Virtuous Bankers: A Day in the Life of the Eighteenth-Century Bank of England" (Princeton UP, 2023)

08 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The eighteenth-century Bank of England was an institution that operated for the benefit of its shareholders--and yet came to be considered, as Adam Sm...

Peter Thilly, "The Opium Business: A History of Crime and Capitalism in Maritime China" (Stanford UP, 2022)

08 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Opium is an awkward commodity. For the West, it’s a reminder of some of the shadier and best forgotten parts of its history. For China (and a few ot...

Amy Brady, "Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks--a Cool History of a Hot Commodity" (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2023)

06 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ice is everywhere: in gas stations, in restaurants, in hospitals, in our homes. Americans think nothing of dropping a few ice cubes into tall glasses ...

Rob Marchant, "East Africa’s Human Environment Interactions: Historical Perspectives for a Sustainable Future" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)

06 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

East Africa’s Human Environment Interactions: Historical Perspectives for a Sustainable Future (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) is an ambitious integra...