New Books in Economic and Business History
Episodes
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...
Tripp Mickle, "After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul" (William Morrow, 2022))
28 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Steve Jobs called Jony Ive his "spiritual partner at Apple." The London-born genius was the second-most powerful person at Apple and the creative forc...
James Belich, "The World the Plague Made: The Black Death and the Rise of Europe" (Princeton UP, 2022)
23 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1346, a catastrophic plague beset Europe and its neighbours. The Black Death was a human tragedy that abruptly halved entire populations and caused...
Ian W. Campbell, "Knowledge and the Ends of Empire: Kazak Intermediaries and Russian Rule on the Steppe, 1731-1917" (Cornell UP, 2017)
23 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Knowledge and the Ends of Empire: Kazak Intermediaries and Russian Rule on the Steppe, 1731-1917 (Cornell University Press, 2017), Ian W. Campbel...
Joshua Savala, "Beyond Patriotic Phobias: Connections, Cooperation, and Solidarity in the Peruvian-Chilean Pacific World" (U California Press, 2022)
22 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The War of the Pacific (1879–1883) looms large in the history of Peru and Chile. Upending the prevailing historiographical focus on the history of c...
Jamie Martin, "The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire, and the Birth of Global Economic Governance" (Harvard UP, 2022)
21 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire, and the Birth of Global Economic Governance (Harvard University Press, 2022) presents a pioneering history that tr...
David Enrich, "Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of Justice" (Mariner Books, 2022)
21 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In his acclaimed #1 bestseller Dark Towers, David Enrich presented the never-before-told saga of how Deutsche Bank became the global face of financia...
Máté Rigó, "Capitalism in Chaos: How the Business Elites of Europe Prospered in the Era of the Great War" (Cornell UP, 2022)
20 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Capitalism in Chaos: How the Business Elites of Europe Prospered in the Era of the Great War (Cornell UP, 2022) explores an often-overlooked conseque...
Philip Lymbery, "Sixty Harvests Left: How to Reach a Nature-Friendly Future" (Bloombury, 2022)
19 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From the United Kingdom to Italy, from Brazil to the Gambia to the USA, Philip Lymbery, the internationally acclaimed author of Farmageddon, goes beh...
Christin Essin, "Working Backstage: A Cultural History and Ethnography of Technical Theater Labor" (U Michigan Press, 2021)
14 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Working Backstage: A Cultural History and Ethnography of Technical Theater Labor (University of Michigan Press, 2021) by Dr. Christin Essin illuminat...
Carl A. Brasseaux and Donald W. Davis, "Asian-Cajun Fusion: Shrimp from the Bay to the Bayou" (UP of Mississippi, 2022)
13 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Shrimp is easily America’s favorite seafood, but its very popularity is the wellspring of problems that threaten the shrimp industry’s existence. ...
Elizabeth Quay Hutchison, "Workers Like All the Rest of Them: Domestic Service and the Rights of Labor in Twentieth-Century Chile" (Duke UP, 2022)
12 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Leah Cargin (Ph.D student, University of Oklahoma) speaks with Elizabeth Quay Hutchison (Professor, University of New Mexico) about Hutchison’s rece...
Eric A. Posner, "How Antitrust Failed Workers" (Oxford UP, 2021)
08 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Eric Posner about his book How Antitrust Failed Workers (Oxford UP, 2021). When anti-trust cases are brought forward, typically t...
Allyson P. Brantley, "Brewing a Boycott: How a Grassroots Coalition Fought Coors and Remade American Consumer Activism" (UNC Press, 2021)
06 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Before the craft beer revolution, Coors was a hot commodity. Impossible to find outside a few states in the West, the beer had a level of "cool" that ...
Fritz Bartel, "The Triumph of Broken Promises: The End of the Cold War and the Rise of Neoliberalism" (Harvard UP, 2022)
05 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Why did the Cold War come to a peaceful end? And why did neoliberal economics sweep across the world in the late twentieth century? In this pathbreaki...
J. Bradford DeLong, "Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century" (Basic Books, 2020)
05 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From one of the world's leading economists, a grand narrative of the century that made us richer than ever, yet left us unsatisfied Before 1870, human...
On John Maynard Keynes’ "General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money"
05 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
John Keynes’ book, General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, was published in England at the tail end of the Great Depression. This text is ...
Truck Nuts: The Political History of Trucks and Trucking
05 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The pickup truck is the symbol of rural conservative masculinity. So, it often takes centre stage in the tired culture wars between reactionary neo-po...
William Alexander, "Ten Tomatoes that Changed the World" (Grand Central Publishing, 2022)
02 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The tomato gets no respect. Never has. Stored in the dustbin of history for centuries, accused of being vile and poisonous, appropriated as wartime pr...
Aria S. Halliday, "Buy Black: How Black Women Transformed US Pop Culture" (U Illinois Press, 2022)
01 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Buy Black: How Black Women Transformed US Pop Culture (University of Illinois Press, 2022), Aria Halliday negotiates the line between "sell out...
Amy Edwards, "Are We Rich Yet?: The Rise of Mass Investment Culture in Contemporary Britain" (U California Press, 2022)
31 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this podcast, Amy Edwards, author of Are We Rich Yet?: The Rise of Mass Investment Culture in Contemporary Britain (U California Press, 2022), ...
Kate Phillips, "Bought & Sold: Scotland, Jamaica and Slavery" (Luath Press, 2022)
31 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Bought & Sold: Scotland, Jamaica and Slavery (Luath Press, 2022) by Kate Phillips traces the story of how and why thousands of Scots made money from ...
Bert Becker, "France and Germany in the South China Sea, c. 1840-1930: Maritime Competition and Imperial Power" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)
29 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
France and Germany in the South China Sea, c. 1840-1930 Maritime Competition and Imperial Power (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) explores imperial power ...
Paul Oyer, "An Economist Goes to the Game: How to Throw Away $580 Million and Other Surprising Insights from the Economics of Sports" (Yale UP, 2022)
29 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Should you train your kid to become a pro athlete? Why do Koreans dominate women’s golf? Why should ticket scalpers get more respect? Why are pro sp...
Greg Woolf, "The Life and Death of Ancient Cities: A Natural History" (Oxford UP, 2020)
29 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The human race is on a 10,000 year urban adventure. Our ancestors wandered the planet or lived scattered in villages, yet by the end of this century a...
Mélissa Mialon, "Big Food & Co" (Thierry Souccar Editions, 2021)
26 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1960s and 1970s, the exposure of Big Tobacco’s aggressive lobbying and internal efforts to obscure science showcasing the harmful effects of ...
Johan Fourie, "Our Long Walk to Economic Freedom: Lessons from 100,000 Years of Human History" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
24 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Our Long Walk to Economic Freedom: Lessons from 100,000 Years of Human History (Cambridge UP, 2022), Johan Fourie gives a new look to economic hi...
Brett Scott, "Cloudmoney: Cash, Cards, Crypto, and the War for Our Wallets" (Harper Business, 2022)
24 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Cloudmoney: Cash, Cards, Crypto, and the War for Our Wallets (Harper Business, 2022), Brett Scott tells an urgent and revelatory story about how ...
Brian Brege, "Tuscany in the Age of Empire" (Harvard UP, 2021)
22 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A new history explores how one of Renaissance Italy's leading cities maintained its influence in an era of global exploration, trade, and empire. The ...
Paolo Squatriti, "Weeds and the Carolingians: Empire, Culture, and Nature in Frankish Europe, AD 750-900" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
17 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Weeds and the Carolingians: Empire, Culture, and Nature in Frankish Europe, AD 750–900 (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Dr. Paolo Squatriti ...
Fiona Moore, "Global Taiwanese: Asian Skilled Labour Migrants in a Changing World" (U Toronto Press, 2021)
17 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Global Taiwanese: Asian Skilled Labour Migrants in a Changing World (U Toronto Press, 2021), Fiona Moore explores the different ways in which Tai...
Samuel Evan Milner, "Robbing Peter to Pay Paul: Power, Profits, and Productivity in Modern America" (Yale UP, 2021)
17 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Concentrated market power and the weakened sway of corporate stakeholders over management have emerged as leading concerns of American political econo...
Eswar S. Prasad, "The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies and Finance" (Harvard UP, 2021)
16 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution is Transforming Currencies and Finance (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2021) provides...
Roselyn Hsueh, "Micro-Institutional Foundations of Capitalism" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
12 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Roselyn Hsueh’s Micro-Institutional Foundations of Capitalism (Cambridge, 2022) presents a new framework for understanding how developing countrie...
Adam Sundberg, "Natural Disaster at the Closing of the Dutch Golden Age" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
12 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
By the early eighteenth century, the economic primacy, cultural efflorescence, and geopolitical power of the Dutch Republic appeared to be waning. The...
Christian Wolmar, "British Rail: A New History" (Michael Joseph, 2022)
11 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
You think you know British Rail. But you don't know the whole story. Now, award-winning writer Christian Wolmar provides a new perspective on national...
Jamie Ducharme, "Big Vape: The Incendiary Rise of Juul" (Henry Holt, 2021)
11 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It began with a smoke break. James Monsees and Adam Bowen were two ambitious graduate students at Stanford, and in between puffs after class they drea...
J. R. McNeill and Peter Engelke, "The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945" (Harvard UP, 2016)
10 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Earth has entered a new age—the Anthropocene—in which humans are the most powerful influence on global ecology. Since the mid-twentieth centur...
M. I. Franklin, "Sampling Politics: Music and the Geocultural" (Oxford UP, 2021)
09 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Music sampling has become a predominantly digitalized practice. It was popularized with the rise of Rap and Hip-Hop, as well as ambient music scenes, ...
Steven B. Miles, "Opportunity in Crisis: Cantonese Migrants and the State in Late Qing China" (Harvard UP, 2021)
09 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Opportunity in Crisis: Cantonese Migrants and the State in Late Qing China (Harvard UP, 2021) explores the history of late Qing Cantonese migration ...
Emma Ashford, "Oil, the State, and War: The Foreign Policies of Petrostates" (Georgetown UP, 2022)
05 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Oil, the State, and War: The Foreign Policies of Petrostates (Georgetown University Press, 2022) by Dr. Emma Ashford presents a comprehensive challen...
Christopher Craig, "Middlemen of Modernity: Local Elites and Agricultural Development in Meiji Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2022)
05 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Christopher Craig’s Middlemen of Modernity: Local Elites and Agricultural Development in Meiji Japan (U Hawaii Press, 2022) is a thoroughly resea...
Nicholas Ferns, "Australia in the Age of International Development, 1945–1975: Colonial and Foreign Aid Policy in Papua New Guinea and Southeast Asia" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020)
05 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the voluminous literature on the history of modernisation theory and its associated concept of development since the end of World War II, much of t...
Matt Stoller, "Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy" (Simon & Schuster, 2020)
03 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy (Simon & Schuster, 2019), Matt Stoller explains how authoritarianism and populism ...
Carl H. Nightingale, "Earthopolis: A Biography of Our Urban Planet" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
01 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This is a biography of Earthopolis, the only Urban Planet we know of. It is a history of how cities gave humans immense power over Earth, for good and...
Michael John Witgen, "Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America" (UNC Press, 2021)
28 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Against long odds, the Anishinaabeg resisted removal, retaining much of their land in the Old Northwest—what’s now Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnes...
Didac Queralt, "Pawned States: State Building in the Era of International Finance" (Princeton UP, 2022)
28 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How foreign lending weakens emerging nations In the nineteenth century, many developing countries turned to the credit houses of Europe for sovereign ...
Christof Dejung et al., "The Global Bourgeoisie: The Rise of the Middle Classes in the Age of Empire" (Princeton UP, 2019)
27 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
While the nineteenth century has been described as the golden age of the European bourgeoisie, the emergence of the middle class and bourgeois culture...
Heejung Chung, "The Flexibility Paradox: Why Flexible Working Leads To (Self-)Exploitation" (Polity Press, 2022)
26 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Why are we working harder? In The Flexibility Paradox: Why Flexible Working Leads To (Self-)Exploitation (Polity Press, 2022), Heejung Chung, a pr...
Maeve Ryan, "Humanitarian Governance and the British Antislavery World System" (Yale UP, 2022)
25 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Maeve Ryan’s new book Humanitarian Governance and the British Antislavery World System (Yale UP, 2022) highlights Britain’s early-nineteenth-ce...
Traci Parker, "Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement: Workers, Consumers, and Civil Rights from the 1930s to the 1980s" (UNC Press, 2019)
22 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement: Workers, Consumers, and Civil Rights from the 1930s to the 1980s (UNC Press, 2019), Traci Parke...
David Brown, "Empire and Enterprise: Money, Power and the Adventurers for Irish Land During the British Civil Wars" (Manchester UP, 2020)
22 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Empire and Enterprise: Money, Power and the Adventurers for Irish Land During the British Civil Wars (Manchester UP, 2020), Dr. David Brown exami...
David D. Dworak, "War of Supply: World War II Allied Logistics in the Mediterranean" (UP of Kentucky Press, 2022)
21 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The era of modern warfare introduced in World War II presented the Allied Powers with one of the more complicated logistical challenges of the century...
Jason Resnikoff, "Labor's End: How the Promise of Automation Degraded Work" (U Illinois Press, 2021)
21 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Labor's End: How the Promise of Automation Degraded Work (U Illinois Press, 2021) traces the discourse around automation from its origins in the fact...
Melanie Bell, "Movie Workers: The Women Who Made British Cinema" (U Illinois Press, 2021)
19 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Where are the women in the history of British cinema? In Movie Workers: The Women Who Made British Cinema (U Illinois Press, 2021), Melanie Bell, a...
Johan Fourie, "Our Long Walk to Economic Freedom: Lessons from 100,000 Years of Human History" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
19 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Our Long Walk to Economic Freedom: Lessons from 100,000 Years of Human History (Cambridge UP, 2022) is an entertaining and engaging guide to global e...
Elena Conis, "How to Sell a Poison: The Rise, Fall, and Toxic Return of DDT" (Bold Type Books, 2022)
13 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The story of DDT as you’ve never heard it before: a fresh look at the much-maligned chemical compound as a cautionary tale of how powerful corporati...
Nick Higham, "The Mercenary River: Private Greed, Public Good--A History of London's Water" (Headline, 2022)
13 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
No city can survive without water, and lots of it. Today we take the stuff for granted: turn a tap and it gushes out. But it wasn’t always so. For c...
David Silkenat, "Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South" (Oxford UP, 2022)
12 Jul 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...
Jayita Sarkar, "Ploughshares and Swords: India's Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War" (Cornell UP, 2022)
11 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ploughshares and Swords: India’s Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2022) by Jayita Sarkar challenges this received ...
Finnish Maritime Interaction with China in the 18th Century
08 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As COVID-19 disrupted maritime trade with China, the world was again reminded of the importance of shipping in global commerce. The roots of Nordic ma...
Meng Zhang, "Timber and Forestry in Qing China: Sustaining the Market" (U Washington Press, 2021)
06 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Focusing on timber in Qing China, Dr. Meng Zhang's new book, Timber and Forestry in Qing China: Sustaining the Market (U Washington Press, 2021) t...
Jessica Lipsky, "It Ain't Retro: Daptone Records and the 21st-Century Soul Revolution" (Jawbone, 2021)
05 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Soul is the most powerful expression of American music--a distinct combination of roots, migration, race, culture, and politics packaged together for ...
Mae Ngai, "The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes, Chinese Migration, and Global Politics" (W. W. Norton, 2022)
04 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1848 and 1899, miners extracted more gold from the earth than in the previous 3,000 years of human history combined. Each gold rush in this pe...
James Stafford, "The Case of Ireland: Commerce, Empire and the European Order, 1750-1848" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
30 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
James Stafford teaches at Columbia University, where he specializes in the political and intellectual history of Ireland, Britain and Western Europe s...
Deirdre N. McCloskey and Art Carden, "Leave Me Alone and I'll Make You Rich: How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
29 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The economist and historian Deirdre Nansen McCloskey has been best known recently for her Bourgeois Era trilogy, a vigorous defense, unrivaled in scop...
Lauren K. Stokes, "Fear of the Family: Guest Workers and Family Migration in the Federal Republic of Germany" (Oxford UP, 2022)
29 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Beginning in 1955, West Germany recruited millions of people as guest workers from Yugoslavia, Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, and especially Turkey. ...
Victor Seow, "Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
29 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Victor Seow’s Carbon Technocracy: Energy regimes in Modern East Asia (U Chicago Press, 2021) is an account of the modern “world that carbon mad...