New Books in Economic and Business History
Episodes
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...
Christopher Blattman, "Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace" (Viking, 2022)
23 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace (Viking, 2022), Chris Blattman explains the five reasons why conflict (rarely) blooms int...
The Future of Public Opinion: A Conversation with Susan Herbst
21 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Politicians and corporations cannot only measure public opinion but also manipulate and create it. And they have been doing so since the 1930s when se...
Carol A. Lipscomb, "The Lady Makes Boots: Enid Justin & the Nocona Boot Company" (Texas Tech UP, 2021)
21 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the summer of 1925, Enid Justin--daughter of H. J. Justin, founder of legendary Justin Boots--announced to her family that she was going to start h...
Robert N. Wiedenmann and J. Ray Fisher, "The Silken Thread: Five Insects and Their Impacts on Human History" (Oxford UP, 2021)
20 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Insects are seldom mentioned in discussions surrounding human history, yet they have dramatically impacted today's societies. The Silken Thread: Five...
Holger Droessler, "Coconut Colonialism: Workers and the Globalization of Samoa" (Harvard UP, 2022)
15 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Coconut Colonialism: Workers and the Globalization of Samoa (Harvard UP, 2022), Holger Droessler provides a novel history of the impact of glob...
John Wills, "Gamer Nation: Video Games and American Culture" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2019)
15 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1975, design engineer Dave Nutting completed work on a new arcade machine. A version of Taito's Western Gun, a recent Japanese arcade machine, Nutt...
Michael Munger, "The Sharing Economy: Its Pitfalls and Promises" (Duke UP, 2021)
15 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Transactions have always taken place. For hundreds of years that 'place' was a market or, more recently, a shopping mall. But in the past two decades ...
David de Jong, "Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany's Wealthiest Dynasties" (Mariner Books, 2022)
13 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Nazi Billionnaires: The Dark History of Germany's Wealthiest Dynasties (HarperCollins, 2022), journalist David de Jong presents a groundbreaking ...
Deindustrialization
13 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Gabriel Winant talks with Kim about the decline of the industrial working class and the rise of the health care industry. Gabriel is an assistant prof...
Sarah Teasley, "Designing Modern Japan" (Reaktion Books, 2022)
13 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Teasley's Designing Modern Japan (Reaktion, 2022) unpicks the history of Japanese design from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of the twe...
Paul Lerner et al., "Jewish Consumer Cultures in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Europe and North America" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)
13 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Jewish Consumer Cultures in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Europe and North America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) investigates the place and meaning ...
Mark Koyama and Jared Rubin, "How the World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth" (Polity, 2022)
09 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Most humans are significantly richer than their ancestors. Humanity gained nearly all of its wealth in the last two centuries. How did this come to pa...
Modernization
08 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Varsha Venkatasubramanian discusses the many trajectories of modernization as a theoretical concept. She focuses mainly on the history of development ...
Erich Schwartzel, "Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy" (Penguin, 2022)
06 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From trade to technology to military might, competition between the United States and China dominates the foreign policy landscape. But this battle fo...
Andrew Shortland and Patrick Degryse, "When Art Isn’t Real: The World's Most Controversial Objects under Investigation" (Leuven UP, 2022)
03 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In When Art Isn’t Real: The World's Most Controversial Objects under Investigation (Leuven University Press, 2022), Dr. Andrew Shortland and Dr. P...
Chris Gratien, "The Unsettled Plain: An Environmental History of the Late Ottoman Frontier" (Stanford UP, 2022)
03 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I talk to Chris Gratien, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Virginia, about his new book, The Unsettled Plain: A...
Jessamyn Abel, "Dream Super-Express: A Cultural History of the World's First Bullet Train" (Stanford UP, 2022)
02 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Jessamyn Abel’s Dream Super-Express: A Cultural History of the World’s First Bullet Train (Stanford UP, 2022) is a history of Japan’s famous ...
Irvin J. Hunt, "Dreaming the Present: Time, Aesthetics, and the Black Cooperative Movement" (UNC Press, 2022)
02 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In their darkest hours over the course of the twentieth century, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ella Baker, George Schuyler, and Fannie Lou Hamer gathered hundreds...
Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan, "Streets of Gold: America's Untold Story of Immigrant Success" (PublicAffairs, 2022)
01 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Streets of Gold: America's Untold Story of Immigrant Success (PublicAffairs, 2022), Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan reveal the true story of im...
Jonathan Saha, "Colonizing Animals: Interspecies Empire in Myanmar" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
01 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Colonial Myanmar was teeming with animals, both wild and domesticated. Yet few histories have devoted close attention to the importance of animals to ...
Tracey Deutsch, "Building a Housewife's Paradise: Gender, Politics, and American Grocery Stores in the Twentieth Century" (UNC Press, 2010)
31 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The title of the book that we are introducing today is Building a Housewife's Paradise Gender, Politics, and American Grocery Stores in the Twentiet...
Pierre Penet and Juan Flores Zendejas, "Sovereign Debt Diplomacies: Rethinking Sovereign Debt from Colonial Empires to Hegemony" (Oxford UP. 2021)
31 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Pierre Penet and Juan Flores Zendejas' book Sovereign Debt Diplomacies: Rethinking Sovereign Debt from Colonial Empires to Hegemony (Oxford UP. 2021...
Adam M. Romero, "Economic Poisoning: Industrial Waste and the Chemicalization of American Agriculture" (U California Press, 2021)
30 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The toxicity of pesticides to the environment and humans is often framed as an unfortunate effect of their benefits to agricultural production. In Ec...
Amanda Phillips, "Sea Change: Ottoman Textiles Between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean" (U California Press, 2021)
27 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Textiles were the second-most-traded commodity in world history, preceded only by grain. In the Ottoman Empire, in particular, the sale and exchange o...
Kate Luce Mulry, "An Empire Transformed: Remolding Bodies and Landscapes in the Restoration Atlantic" (NYU Press, 2021)
25 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When Charles II ascended the English throne in 1660 after two decades of civil war, he was confronted with domestic disarray and a sprawling empire in...
The Future of Neoliberalism: A Conversation with Gary Gerstle
24 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The word neoliberalism is often used more as an insult than a description of a set of beliefs. And people can be rather hazy about the beliefs it refe...
Scott Reynolds Nelson, "Oceans of Grain: How American Wheat Remade the World" (Basic Books, 2022)
23 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Grain traders wandering across the steppe; the Russian conquest of Ukraine (in the 18th century, that is); boulevard barons and wheat futures; railro...
Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan, "Streets of Gold: America's Untold Story of Immigrant Success" (Public Affairs, 2022)
18 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Immigration is one of the most fraught, and possibly most misunderstood, topics in American social discourse—yet, in most cases, the things we belie...
Gijs Mom, "Globalizing Automobilism: Exuberance and the Emergence of Layered Mobility, 1900–1980" (Berghahn Books, 2020)
17 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Why has "car society" proven so durable, even in the face of mounting environmental and economic crises? In Globalizing Automobilism: Exuberance and ...
Simon Peter Rowberry, "Four Shades of Gray: The Amazon Kindle Platform" (MIT Press, 2022)
15 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Four Shades of Gray: The Amazon Kindle Platform (MIT Press, 2022) is the first book-length analysis of Amazon's Kindle explores the platform's techno...
Facing Failure and the Museum Dedicated to It
12 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about: Why failure is part of the hidden curriculum Why you can’t be creative or innov...
Jeff D. Colgan, "Partial Hegemony: Oil Politics and International Order" (Oxford UP, 2021)
10 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When and why does international order change? The largest peaceful transfer of wealth across borders in all of human history began with the oil crisis...
The Problem with Museums: A Conversation with Georgina Adam and Nizan Shaked
10 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the past few years, museums of contemporary art have come under a fair deal of scrutiny. Pressures from groups such as Decoloinise This Space or ...