New Books in Economic and Business History
Episodes
How Did the Pandemic Transform Workers and Work?
16 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The pandemic brought to the fore a group of workers deemed “essential” – frontline healthcare workers, restaurant employees, slaughterhouse work...
South Korea, Technology, and Globalization
16 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Patrick Chung, assistant professor of history at the University of Maryland, talks about his research on the rise of shipping and manufacturing in Sou...
Infrastructure and Inequality
15 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Armanios, associate professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, talks about his work on infrastructure and inequa...
The Future of Inequality: A Discussion with Mike Savage
13 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Most people in developed countries think inequality is increasing. And most would also agree that in terms of the global poor, the last 20 years have ...
Sabrina Mittermeier, "Fan Phenomena: Disney" (Intellect Books, 2023)
13 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sabrina Mittermeier's edited volume Fan Phenomena: Disney (Intellect Books, 2023) analyzes the fandom of Disney brands across a variety of media inc...
Understanding Technology Bubbles
11 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Brent Goldfarb and David Kirsch, professors of entrepreneurship and strategy at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business, talk ...
Tricia Starks, "Cigarettes and Soviets: Smoking in the USSR" (Cornell UP, 2022)
11 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Seeing cigarette smoking as a cultural phenomenon of Western modernity is perhaps easier when the test case is outside the US where the narrative is ...
Clemente Penna, "Urban Economies, Capital, Credit, and Slavery in Rio de Janeiro, 1820-1860" (UFRJ, 2019)
10 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode, Martín Garrido Lepe y Beatriz Rodriguez-Satizabal talk with Clemente Penna winner of the Tamás Szmrecsányi Prize for thesis in eco...
Alessandro Iandolo, "Arrested Development: The Soviet Union in Ghana, Guinea, and Mali, 1955-1968" (Cornell UP, 2022)
10 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the middle of the 20th century, there was a passionate affair, between the Soviet empire and newly independent West African states. It was a short...
The History of Household Technology from Open Hearth to the Microwave
09 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Historian Ruth Schwartz Cowan talks about her book, More Work for Mother, with Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel. The book examines the history of how ...
Neoliberalism and Higher Education
08 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This episode is a roundtable discussion on the influence of the neoliberal project on higher education. Our guests are Professor Emeritus Frank Fear f...
(In)efficiency: Should Efficiency be a Moral Value?
05 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Efficiency has moved from a technique for measuring machines to a widely held moral value. But at what cost? Guests Jennifer Alexander, Associate Pro...
Regine A. Spector, "Order at the Bazaar: Power and Trade in Central Asia" (Cornell UP, 2017)
04 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Order at the Bazaar: Power and Trade in Central Asia (Cornell UP, 2017) delves into the role of bazaars in the political economy and development of C...
Josiah Ober, "The Greeks and the Rational: The Discovery of Practical Reason" (U California Press, 2022)
01 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Tracing practical reason from its origins to its modern and contemporary permutations, the Greek discovery of practical reason, as the skilled perform...
Luke Munn, "Automation Is a Myth" (Stanford UP, 2022)
27 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For some, automation will usher in a labor-free utopia; for others, it signals a disastrous age-to-come. Yet whether seen as dream or nightmare, autom...
Garritt van Dyk, "Commerce, Food, and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England and France" (Amsterdam UP, 2022)
26 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Garritt van Dyk talks about national identity, food, and cooking in this conversation about Commerce, Food, and Identity in Seventeenth-Century Engla...
Naa Oyo A. Kwate, "White Burgers, Black Cash: Fast Food from Black Exclusion to Exploitation" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)
25 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The long and pernicious relationship between fast food restaurants and the African American community. Today, fast food is disproportionately located ...
The Future of Global Trade: A Discussion with Shannon K. O'Neil
22 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Critics of globalisation come in many forms from environmentalists to trade unionists and many others in between. In the midst of all the controversy ...
John D. Wong, "Hong Kong Takes Flight: Commercial Aviation and the Making of a Global Hub, 1930s-1998" (Harvard UP, 2022)
22 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On July 6, 1998, the last flight took off from Kai Tak International Airport, marking the end of an era for Hong Kong aviation. For decades, internati...
Illiquidity + Opacity = Insolvency: A Discussion with Gary Stern, Former President of the Minneapolis Fed
22 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What's going on in private markets? As interest rates have gone up, public markets have been marked down much more severely than assets in the private...
Clara E. Mattei, "The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
19 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A groundbreaking examination of austerity’s dark intellectual origins. For more than a century, governments facing financial crisis have resorted to...
Jane Tynan, "Trench Coat" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
19 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Object Lessons is a Bloomsbury series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. This interview focuses on Trenc...
Pamela H. Smith, "From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern World" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
19 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How and why early modern European artisans began to record their knowledge. In From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Kn...
Carl Griffin, "The Politics of Hunger: Protest, Poverty and Policy in England, 1750-1840" (Manchester UP, 2020)
19 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were supposedly the period in which the threat of famine lifted for the peoples of England. But hunger r...
Jeremy L. Wallace, "Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts: Information, Ideology, and Authoritarianism in China" (Oxford UP, 2022)
18 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, a few numbers came to define Chinese politics--until those numbers did not count what mattered and what they counted did not measure up. ...
Quentin Bruneau, "States and the Masters of Capital: Sovereign Lending, Old and New" (Columbia UP, 2022)
18 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today, states' ability to borrow private capital depends on stringent evaluations of their creditworthiness. While many presume that this has long bee...
The Future of the Arms Industry: A Discussion with Pieter D. Wezeman
17 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
If you read the business pages of most newspapers, they are filled with stories about the sort of companies that people do business with – airlines,...
Dan Slater and Joseph Wong, "From Development to Democracy: The Transformations of Modern Asia" (Princeton UP, 2022)
17 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Why some of Asia’s authoritarian regimes have democratized as they have grown richer—and why others haven’t Over the past century, Asia has been...
Gregory Smithsimon, "Liberty Road: Black Middle-Class Suburbs and the Battle Between Civil Rights and Neoliberalism" (NYU Press, 2022)
16 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Half of Black Americans who live in the one hundred largest metropolitan areas are now living in suburbs, not cities. In Liberty Road: Black Middle-C...
Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe, "When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm" (Doubleday, 2022)
16 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
An explosive, deeply reported exposé of McKinsey & Company, When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consultin...
Cynthia Radding, "Bountiful Deserts: Sustaining Indigenous Worlds in Northern New Spain" (U Arizona Press, 2022)
16 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Common understandings drawn from biblical references, literature, and art portray deserts as barren places that are far from God and spiritual sustena...
Stephanie Decker, "Postcolonial Transition and Global Business History: British Multinational Companies in Ghana and Nigeria" (Routledge, 2022)
16 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I interview Prof. Stephanie Decker about her new book Postcolonial Transition and Global Business History British Multinational Co...
Daniel Gross. "A Banker's Journey: How Edmond J. Safra Built a Global Financial Empire" (Radius Book Group, 2022)
14 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Who was Edmond J. Safra? "The greatest banker of his generation," in the estimation of a former World Bank President. The founder of four massive fina...
Jake S. Friedman, "The Disney Revolt: The Great Labor War of Animation's Golden Age" (Chicago Review Press, 2022)
10 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Soon after the birth of Mickey Mouse, one animator raised the Disney Studio far beyond Walt’s expectations. That animator also led a union war that ...
James Mark and Paul Betts, "Socialism Goes Global: The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the Age of Decolonisation" (Oxford UP, 2022)
09 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Socialism Goes Global: The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the Age of Decolonisation (Oxford UP, 2022) is the first work to provide a broad histor...
Max Haiven, "Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire" (Pluto Press, 2022)
08 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Palm oil is a commodity like no other. Found in half of supermarket products, from food to cosmetics to plastics, it has shaped the world in which we ...
Robert L. Hetzel, "The Federal Reserve: A New History" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
08 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Federal Reserve: A New History (University of Chicago Press, 2022), Robert Hetzel draws on a 43-year career as an economist in the central b...
Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, "Indentured Students: How Government-Guaranteed Loans Left Generations Drowning in College Debt" (Harvard UP, 2021)
04 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It didn't always take thirty years to pay off the cost of a bachelor's degree. In Indentured Students: How Government-Guaranteed Loans Left Generat...
Joseph Sassoon, "The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire" (Pantheon Books, 2022)
01 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Sassoons were one of the great merchant families of the nineteenth century, alongside such names as the Jardines, the Mathesons, and the Swires. T...
Mathematical Morality: The Ideology that Justifies Billionaires
30 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How can billionaires justify the endless accumulation of wealth? Effective altruism. An almost religious philosophical belief. Sam Bankman-Fried, the ...
Paul Belleflamme and Martin Peitz, "The Economics of Platforms: Concepts and Strategy" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
30 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Digital platforms controlled by Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Tencent and Uber have transformed not only the ways we do business, but ...
Trevor Jackson, "Impunity and Capitalism: The Afterlives of European Financial Crises, 1690-1830" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
30 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Whose fault are financial crises, and who is responsible for stopping them, or repairing the damage? Impunity and Capitalism: The Afterlives of Europ...
Agathe Demarais, "Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against U.S. Interests" (Columbia UP, 2022)
29 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sanctions have become the go-to foreign policy tool for the United States. Coercive economic measures such as trade tariffs, financial penalties, and ...
Darra Goldstein, "The Kingdom of Rye: A Brief History of Russian Food" (U California Press, 2022)
28 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Kingdom of Rye: A Brief History of Russian Food (U California Press, 2022) unearths the foods and flavors of the Russian land. Preeminent food s...
Tim Walker and Lucian Morris, "The Handbook of Banking Technology" (John Wiley & Sons, 2021)
28 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Handbook of Banking Technology (John Wiley & Sons, 2021), Walker and Morris provide a first comprehensive view of the systems that support a...
Kwasi Konadu, "Many Black Women of this Fortress: Graça, Mónica and Adwoa, Three Enslaved Women of Portugal's African Empire" (Hurst, 2022)
28 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Kwasi Konadu's book Many Black Women of this Fortress: Graça, Mónica and Adwoa, Three Enslaved Women of Portugal's African Empire (Hurst, 2022) p...
Jennifer Mittelstadt and Mark R. Wilson, "The Military and the Market" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)
25 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout its history, the U.S. military has worked in close connection to market-based institutions and structures. It has run systems of free and u...
Kees Boterbloem, "Russia and the Dutch Republic, 1566–1725: A Forgotten Friendship" (Lexington Books, 2021)
24 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Once upon a time, it was said that Russia was isolated and ignorant until Peter the Great opened Russia to the West and ushered in modernization. Whil...
Michael A. Verney, "A Great and Rising Nation: Naval Exploration and Global Empire in the Early US Republic" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
23 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A Great and Rising Nation: Naval Exploration and Global Empire in the Early US Republic (University of Chicago Press, 2022) by Dr. Michael A. Verney ...
Anna Arabindan-Kesson, "Black Bodies, White Gold: Art, Cotton, and Commerce in the Atlantic World" (Duke UP, 2021)
23 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Black Bodies, White Gold: Art, Cotton, and Commerce in the Atlantic World (Duke UP, 2021), Anna Arabindan-Kesson uses cotton, a commodity centra...
Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow, "Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back" (Beacon Press, 2022)
23 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Corporate concentration has breached the stratosphere, as have corporate profits. An ever-expanding constellation of industries are now monopolies (wh...
Paul Barba, "Country of the Cursed and the Driven: Slavery and the Texas Borderlands" (U Nebraska Press, 2021)
22 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Most of what people think they know about Texas history is wrong, argues Bucknell University history professor Paul Barba in Country of the Cursed an...
Caroline Grego, "Hurricane Jim Crow: How the Great Sea Island Storm of 1893 Shaped the Lowcountry South" (UNC Press, 2022)
22 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On an August night in 1893, the deadliest hurricane in South Carolina history struck the Lowcountry, killing thousands—almost all African American. ...
Lyndsie Bourgon, "Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods" (Little, Brown Spark, 2022)
22 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
There's a strong chance that chair you are sitting on was made from stolen lumber. In Tree Thieves: Crime And Survival In North America's Woods (Lit...
Antonio T. Bly, "Escaping Slavery: A Documentary History of Native American Runaways in British North America" (Lexington Books, 2022)
21 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Antonio T. Bly had collected and edited hundreds of advertisements offering a reward for enslaved Native Americans who run away from their masters. E...
Jennifer Eaglin, "Sweet Fuel: A Political and Environmental History of Brazilian Ethanol" (Oxford UP, 2022)
18 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As the hazards of carbon emissions increase and governments around the world seek to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, the search for clean and afforda...
Caroline Roope, "The History of the London Underground Map" (Pen and Sword Transport, 2022)
18 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Few transportation maps can boast the pedigree that London’s iconic ‘Tube’ map can. Sported on t-shirts, keyrings, duvet covers, and most recent...
Eric Tagliocozzo, "In Asian Waters: Oceanic Worlds from Yemen to Yokohama" (Princeton UP, 2022)
17 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the nineteenth century, one group of American merchants reported an odd request from the Vietnamese emperor. An envoy asked if the traders could he...
David McDermott Hughes, "Energy without Conscience: Oil, Climate Change, and Complicity" (Duke UP, 2017)
16 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Energy without Conscience: Oil, Climate Change, and Complicity (Duke University Press, 2017), David McDermott Hughes investigates why climate c...
Leandro Prados de la Escosura, "Human Development and the Path to Freedom: 1870 to the Present" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
16 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How has human development evolved during the last 150 years of globalization and economic growth? How has human development been distributed across co...
The Future of Data Control: A Discussion with Sarah Lamdan
15 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A few big companies are selling information about us to governments and companies. But beyond a general sense of unease, what do we need to know about...
Christopher Marquis and Kunyuan Qiao, "Mao and Markets: The Communist Roots of Chinese Enterprise" (Yale UP, 2022)
15 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Mao and Markets: The Communist Roots of Chinese Enterprise (Yale University Press, 2022) by Dr. Christopher Marquis & Dr. Kunyuan Qiao presents a tho...
Sofi Thanhauser, "Worn: A People's History of Clothing" (Vintage, 2022)
11 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Worn: A People's History of Clothing (Vintage, 2022) by Sofi Thanhauser explores linen, cotton, silk, synthetics, wool: through the stories of these ...
David Silkenat, "Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South" (Oxford UP, 2022)
10 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
They worked Virginia's tobacco fields, South Carolina's rice marshes, and the Black Belt's cotton plantations. Wherever they lived, enslaved people fo...
Charles Read, "The Great Famine in Ireland and Britain's Financial Crisis" (Boydell & Brewer, 2022)
09 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Great Famine in Ireland and Britain’s Financial Crisis (Boydell & Brewer, 2022) is rich in archival detail and offers a ground-breaking analysi...
Elizabeth Schroeder Schlabach, "Dream Books and Gamblers: Black Women's Work in Chicago's Policy Game" (U Illinois Press, 2022)
07 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ubiquitous illegal lotteries known as policy flourished in Chicago's Black community during the overlapping waves of the Great Migration. Policy "quee...
Sarah Ifft Decker, "The Fruit of Her Hands: Jewish and Christian Women's Work in Medieval Catalan Cities" (Pennsylvania State, 2022)
07 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the thriving urban economies of late thirteenth-century Catalonia, Jewish and Christian women labored to support their families and their communiti...
Ghassan Moazzin, "Foreign Banks and Global Finance in Modern China" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
07 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Using previously unexplored and meticulously analyzed sources from China and to a lesser extent Japan, combined with those of Germany and the UK, Gh...
Vivek Chibber, "Confronting Capitalism: How the World Works and How to Change It" (Verso, 2022)
03 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Why is our society so unequal? Why, despite their small numbers, do the rich dominate policy and politics even in democratic countries? Why is it so d...
Bruce G. Carruthers, "The Economy of Promises: Trust, Power, and Credit in America" (Princeton UP, 2022)
02 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A comprehensive and illuminating account of the history of credit in America, The Economy of Promises: Trust, Power & Credit in America (Princeton U...
Sarah T. Hines, "Water for All: Community, Property, and Revolution in Modern Bolivia" (U California Press, 2021)
02 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah T. Hines's Water for All Community, Property, and Revolution in Modern Bolivia (University of California Press, 2021) chronicles how Bolivian...
Ashley Sweetman, "Cyber and the City: Securing London’s Banks in the Computer Age" (Springer, 2022)
01 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Ashley Sweetman works in cyber security for a London-based global bank and holds a PhD from the Department of War Studies at King’s College Lon...
Yuhua Wang, "The Rise and Fall of Imperial China: The Social Origins of State Development" (Princeton UP, 2022)
01 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How social networks shaped the imperial Chinese state China was the world’s leading superpower for almost two millennia, falling behind only in the ...
Brian A. Wong, "The Tao of Alibaba: Inside the Chinese Digital Giant That Is Changing the World" (PublicAffairs, 2022)
01 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This podcast features Brian A. Wong, discussing his new book, The Tao of Alibaba: Inside the Chinese Digital Giant That is Changing the World (Publ...
Tom Haines-Doran, "Derailed: How to Fix Britain's Broken Railways" (Manchester UP, 2022)
31 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Why don't trains run on time? Why are fares so expensive? Why are there so many strikes? Few would disagree that Britain's railways are broken, and ha...
Ian Morris, "Geography Is Destiny: Britain and the World--A 10,000-Year History" (FSG, 2022)
31 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Geography Is Destiny: Britain and the World--A 10,000-Year History (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2022), Ian Morris chronicles the eight-thousand-yea...
Daniel D. Garcia-Swartz and Martin Campbell-Kelly, "Cellular: An Economic and Business History of the International Mobile-Phone Industry" (MIT Press, 2022)
28 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we discuss a book that will be appealing to a general audience and which helps to bridge the gap of the story of communication in the...
Ahmed White, "Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers" (U California Press, 2022)
24 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1917, the Industrial Workers of the World was rapidly gaining strength and members. Within a decade, this radical union was effectively destroyed, ...
Álvaro Sevilla-Buitrago, "Against the Commons: A Radical History of Urban Planning" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)
21 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Characterized by shared, self-managed access to food, housing, and basic conditions for a creative life, the commons are essential for communities to ...
On Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations"
19 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1776, Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, an investigation into the nature of wealth. Smith is now considered the Father of Capitalism or t...
John Briscoe, "Crush: The Triumph of California Wine" (U Nevada Press, 2018)
19 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1910, the future of California wine looked dim. Beset by crises ranging from earthquakes to insect infestations, and with momentum moving toward pr...
John Suval, "Dangerous Ground: Squatters, Statesmen, and the Antebellum Rupture of American Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2022)
19 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The squatter—defined by Noah Webster as "one that settles on new land without a title"—had long been a fixture of America's frontier past. In the ...
Kimberly Kay Hoang, "Spiderweb Capitalism: How Global Elites Exploit Frontier Markets" (Princeton UP, 2022)
17 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 2015, the anonymous leak of the Panama Papers brought to light millions of financial and legal documents exposing how the superrich hide their mone...
Jakob Feinig, "Moral Economies of Money: Politics and the Monetary Constitution of Society" (Stanford UP, 2022)
17 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this podcast Jakob Feinig introduces his ideas about how and when people's practices and institutions shape money and money creation. He provided d...
Rafico Ruiz, "Slow Disturbance: Infrastructural Mediation on the Settler Colonial Resource Frontier" (Duke UP, 2021)
13 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From the late nineteenth through most of the twentieth century, the evangelical Protestant Grenfell Mission in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, crea...
Geert Lovink, "Stuck on the Platform: Reclaiming the Internet" (Valiz, 2022)
13 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We’re all trapped. No matter how hard you try to delete apps from your phone, the power of seduction draws you back. Doom scrolling is the new norma...
P. E. Caquet, "Opium's Orphans: The 200-Year History of the War on Drugs" (Reaktion Books, 2022)
12 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The global war on drugs began some 150 years before US President Richard Nixon launched the current chapter of America’s drug war in 1971. In Opium...
Alan Warde et al., "The Social Significance of Dining Out: A Study of Continuity and Change" (Manchester UP, 2020)
12 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dining out used to be considered exceptional. However, the Food Standards Authority reported that in 2014, one meal in six was eaten away from home in...
Suzana Sawyer, "The Small Matter of Suing Chevron" (Duke UP, 2022)
12 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 2011, an Ecuadorian court issued the world’s largest environmental contamination liability: a $9.5 billion judgment against Chevron. Within years...
Mitch Troutman, "Bootleg Coal Rebellion: The Pennsylvania Miners Who Seized an Industry, 1925-1942" (PM Press, 2022)
11 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Told with great intimacy and compassion, Bootleg Coal Rebellion: The Pennsylvania Miners Who Seized an Industry, 1925-1942 (PM Press, 2022) uncovers...
Robyn D'Avignon, "A Ritual Geology: Gold and Subterranean Knowledge in Savanna West Africa" (Duke UP, 2022)
10 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In A Ritual Geology: Gold and Subterranean Knowledge in Savanna West Africa (Duke University Press, 2022), Robyn d’Avignon, Assistant Professor of...
Margarita Fajardo, "The World That Latin America Created: The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America in the Development Era" (Harvard UP, 2021)
07 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The World That Latin America Created: The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America in the Development Era (Harvard University Press, 202...
A History of the Biggest Mining Boom in Canadian History
07 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Greg Marchildon interviews Charlie Angus, the author of Cobalt: Cradle of the Demon Metals, Birth of a Mining Superpower (House of Anansi P, 2022). ...
Fanny Pigeaud and Ndongo Samba Sylla, "Africa's Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Franc Story" (Pluto Press, 2021)
07 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Colonialism persists in many African countries due to the continuation of imperial monetary policy. Africa's Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Franc St...
Edward Chancellor, "The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2022)
06 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Edward Chancellor's just published history of interest rates could not be better timed. As the world adjusts to rising rates after decades of falling...
Ricardo López-Pedreros, "The Middle Classes in Latin America: Subjectivities, Practices, and Genealogies" (Routledge, 2022)
05 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As a collective effort, The Middle Classes in Latin America: Subjectivities, Practices, and Genealogies (Routledge, 2022) locates the formation of ...
The Cataclysmic Collapse of Abitibi Power and Paper
04 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon interviews the author of Corporate Cataclysm: Abitibi Power & Paper and the Collapse of the Newsprint Indust...
James Bessen, "The New Goliaths: How Corporations Use Software to Dominate Industries, Kill Innovation, and Undermine Regulation" (Yale UP, 2022)
29 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The New Goliaths: How Corporations Use Software to Dominate Industries, Kill Innovation, and Undermine Regulation (Yale UP, 2022), James Bessen e...
Michael Leese, "Making Money in Ancient Athens" (U Michigan Press, 2021)
29 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Given their cultural, intellectual, and scientific achievements, surely the Greeks were able to approach their economic affairs in a rational manner l...
Alex Williams and Jeremy Gilbert, "Hegemony Now: How Big Tech and Wall Street Won the World (And How We Win it Back)" (Verso, 2022)
29 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today power is in the hands of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. How do we understand this transformation in power? And what can we do about it? We cann...