New Books in Economic and Business History
Episodes
Claire L. Jones, "The Business of Birth Control: Contraception and Commerce in Britain before the Sexual Revolution" (Manchester UP, 2020)
29 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How does understanding business help us understand sex? In The Business of Birth Control: Contraception and Commerce in Britain before the Sexual Rev...
Peter E. Hamilton, "Made in Hong Kong: Transpacific Networks and a New History of Globalization" (Columbia UP, 2021)
29 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1949 and 1997, Hong Kong transformed from a struggling British colonial outpost into a global financial capital. Made in Hong Kong: Transpac...
Sarah K. Mock, "Farm (and Other F Words): The Rise and Fall of the Small Family Farm" (New Degree Press, 2021)
23 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Farm (and Other F Words): The Rise and Fall of the Small Family Farm (New Degree Press, 2021), Sarah K. Mock seeks to answer “what exactly d...
Shane Hamilton, "Supermarket USA: Food and Power in the Cold War Farms Race" (Yale UP, 2018)
22 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This episode of the New Books in Economic and Business History is an interview with Dr. Shane Hamilton, Senior Lecturer in Management at The York Mana...
Zachary Karabell, "Inside Money: Brown Brothers Harriman and the American Way of Power" (Penguin, 2021)
22 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1800 a Belfast linen merchant named Alexander Brown emigrated with his wife and eldest son to Baltimore. Today his family’s name lives on in the ...
Emma Rothschild, "An Infinite History: The Story of a Family in France over Three Centuries" (Princeton UP, 2021)
15 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Emma Rothschild’s new book, An Infinite History: The Story of a Family in France over Three Centuries (Princeton University Press, 2021) (see the ...
Fei-Hsien Wang, "Pirates and Publishers: A Social History of Copyright in Modern China" (Princeton UP, 2019)
07 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Pirates and Publishers: A Social History of Copyright in Modern China (Princeton University Press, 2019) is a detailed historical look at how copyri...
Suzanne L. Marchand, "Porcelain: A History from the Heart of Europe" (Princeton UP, 2020)
04 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Suzanne L. Marchand's new book Porcelain: A History from the Heart of Europe (Princeton University Press, 2020) balances several histories at once t...
James M. Banner Jr., "The Ever-Changing Past: Why All History Is Revisionist History" (Yale UP, 2021)
04 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In recent years the phrase “revisionist history” has emerged as a label for politically-correct reexaminations of an unalterable understanding of ...
Nate Holdren, "Injury Impoverished: Workplace Accidents, Capitalism, and Law in the Progressive Era" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
03 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Nate Holdren is the author of Injury Impoverished: Workplace Accidents, Capitalism, and Law in the Progressive Era, published by Cambridge University...
Kristy Ironside, "A Full-Value Ruble: The Promise of Prosperity in the Postwar Soviet Union" (Harvard UP, 2021)
02 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In spite of Karl Marx's proclamation that money would become obsolete under Communism, the ruble remained a key feature of Soviet life. In fact, altho...
Joanne Meyerowitz, "A War on Global Poverty: The Lost Promise of Redistribution and the Rise of Microcredit" (Princeton UP, 2021)
27 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A War on Global Poverty: The Lost Promise of Redistribution and the Rise of Microcredit (Princeton UP, 2021) provides a fresh account of US involveme...
Christine Walker, "Jamaica Ladies: Female Slaveholders and the Creation of Britain's Atlantic Empire" (UNC Press, 2020)
21 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Jamaica Ladies: Female Slaveholders and the Creation of Britain's Atlantic Empire (Omohundro Institute/University of North Carolina Press, 2020) is t...
Amanda Ciafone, "Counter-Cola: A Multinational History of the Global Corporation" (U California Press, 2019)
20 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Amanda Ciafone's (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) about her book Counter-Cola: A Multinational History of the Global Cor...
Joshua D. Rothman, "The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America" (Basic Book, 2021)
20 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Joshua Rothman’s The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America was published by Basic Books in 2021, and tells a sprawling h...
Justene Hill Edwards, "Unfree Markets: The Slaves' Economy and the Rise of Capitalism in South Carolina" (Columbia UP, 2021)
19 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Justene Hill Edwards is the author of Unfree Markets: The Slaves’ Economy and the Rise of Capitalism in South Carolina (Columbia University Press,...
Mary Pilon, "The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World's Favorite Board Game" (Bloomsbury, 2015)
17 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The inside story of the world's most famous board game-a buried piece of American history with an epic scandal that continues today. The Monopolists: ...
John Wong, "Global Trade in the Nineteenth Century: The House of Houqua and the Canton System" (Cambridge UP, 2016)
13 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Global Trade in the Nineteenth Century: The House of Houqua and the Canton System (Cambridge University Press, 2016), John D. Wong examines the ...
Hannah Barker, "That Most Precious Merchandise: The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea Slaves, 1260-1500" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2019)
12 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Before the Transatlantic slave trade ravaged the western coast of Africa, immense numbers of persons were taken from their homes and carried across th...
Brian Castner, "Stampede: Gold Fever and Disaster in the Klondike" (Doubleday, 2021)
12 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1897, the United States was mired in the worst economic depression that the country had yet endured. So when all the newspapers announced gold was ...
John Kenneth Galbraith, "The Great Crash 1929" (Penguin Classics, 2021)
11 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"A good knowledge of what happened in 1929 remains our best safeguard against the recurrence of the more unhappy events of those days", wrote John Ken...
Lila Corwin Berman, "The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex: The History of a Multibillion-Dollar Institution" (Princeton UP, 2020)
05 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For years, American Jewish philanthropy has been celebrated as the proudest product of Jewish endeavors in the United States, its virtues extending fr...
Andrew Konove, "Black Market Capital: Urban Politics and the Shadow Economy in Mexico City" (U California Press, 2018)
03 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Black Market Capital Urban Politics and the Shadow Economy in Mexico City (University of California Press, 2018), Andrew Konove traces the hist...
Paloma Fernández Pérez. "The Emergence of Modern Hospital Management and Organisation in the World 1880s-1930s" (Emerald, 2021)
28 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Emergence of Modern Hospital Management and Organisation in the World 1880s-1930s (Emerald, 2021) uses a range of empirical evidence and case st...
Gordon H. Chang, "Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad" (HMH, 2019)
26 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How do we understand our contemporary politics of race in historical, economical, and political context? How do we make sense of the Chinese Exclusion...
W. Quinn and J. D. Turner, "Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
30 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Are we in the midst of a financial bubble? Do the current valuations of the electronic vehicle stocks or their SPACs make you raise an eyebrow? The...
Zach Sell, "Trouble of the World: Slavery and Empire in the Age of Capital" (UNC Press, 2021)
29 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The middle decades of the 19th century witnessed the expansion of slavery and white settlement and dispossession of Indigenous lands west of the Missi...
A. Gandhi et al., "Rethinking Markets in Modern India: Embedded Exchange and Contested Jurisdiction" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
26 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Modern markets and exchange, compared with other social and political spheres, are seen through technical abstractions. This intellectual compartmenta...
Robert Darnton, "Pirating and Publishing: The Book Trade in the Age of Enlightenment" (Oxford UP, 2021)
26 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the late-18th century, a group of publishers in what historian Robert Darnton calls the "Fertile Crescent" — countries located along the French b...
Andrew Grant Wood, "The Business of Leisure: Tourism History in Latin America and the Caribbean" (U Nebraska Press, 2021)
27 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Andrew Grant Wood’s new edited volume, The Business of Leisure: Tourism History in Latin America and the Caribbean (University of Nebras...
Emma Griffin, "Bread Winner: An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy" (Yale UP, 2020)
25 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Emma Griffin's Bread Winner: An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy (Yale UP, 2020) offers a refreshingly different take on the age of nation...
K. Yazdani and D. M. Menon, "Capitalisms: Towards a Global History" (Oxford UP, 2020)
06 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Capitalisms: Towards a Global History (Oxford University Press, 2020), edited by Kaveh Yazdani and Dilip M. Menon, aims to decenter work on the histo...
J. A. Delton, "The Industrialists: How the National Association of Manufacturers Shaped American Capitalism" (Princeton UP, 2020)
02 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Historians often portray the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) as a conservative force in debates over free enterprise, battles against unio...
Ravi Palat, "The Making of an Indian Ocean World-Economy, 1250–1650" (Palgrave, 2015)
19 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ravi Palat’s The Making of an Indian Ocean World-Economy, 1250–1650: Princes, Paddy fields, and Bazaars (Palgrave, 2015) counters eurocentric noti...
Joshua Greenberg, "Bank Notes and Shinplasters: The Rage for Paper Money in the Early Republic" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020)
09 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What is money? No, really, what is money? It turns out the answer is not so simple. During the course of the 20th century, most of us have gotten used...
Joshua B. Freeman, "Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World" (W. W. Norton, 2019)
08 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In an accessible and timely work of scholarship, celebrated historian Joshua B. Freeman's Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Mod...
Marcia Chatelain, "Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America" (Liveright, 2020)
18 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America (Liveright, 2020) by Marcia Chatelain is a fascinating examination of the relationship between the fast-...
Amy Offner, "Sorting Out the Mixed Economy: The Rise and Fall of Welfare and Developmental States in the Americas" (Princeton UP, 2019)
22 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The neoliberal 1980s of austerity and privatization may appear as a break with the past—perhaps a model of government drawn up by libertarian econom...
Lawrence Glickman, "Free Enterprise: An American History" (Yale UP, 2019)
13 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
“Free enterprise” is an everyday phrase that connotes an American common sense. It appears everywhere from political speeches to pop culture. And ...
Michael Zakim, "Accounting for Capitalism: The World the Clerk Made" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
08 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The clerk attended his desk and counter at the intersection of two great themes of modern historical experience: the development of a market economy a...
Vicki Howard, "From Main Street to Mall: The Rise and Fall of the American Department Store" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2015)
24 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
This week we take a break from fun and games to talk about business and consumerism–which, to be sure, is for some people also fun and games. As Vic...
Richard Vague, "A Brief History of Doom: Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2019)
04 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Vague really really cares about private-sector debt. And he thinks you should too. In A Brief History of Doom: Two Hundred Years of Financial ...
Kris Lane, "Potosí: The Silver City That Changed the World" (U California Press, 2019)
20 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1545, a native Andean prospector hit pay dirt on a desolate red mountain in highland Bolivia. There followed the world's greatest silver bonanza, m...
Michael R. Cohen, "Cotton Capitalists: American Jewish Entrepreneurship in the Reconstruction Era" (NYU Press, 2017)
17 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Michael R. Cohen is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at Tulane University, where he holds a Sizeler Professorship. He is the author of the newly ...
Caitlin C. Rosenthal, “Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management” (Harvard UP, 2018)
31 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The familiar narrative of American business development begins in the industrial North, where paternalistic factory owners, committed to a kind of Pro...
Rupali Mishra, “A Business of State: Commerce, Politics, and the Birth of the East India Company” (Harvard UP, 2018)
29 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Though today the public and private sectors are treated as distinct if not separate, the situation was quite different in early modern England. Back t...
Peter James Hudson, “Bankers and Empire: How Wall Street Colonized the Caribbean” (U Chicago Press, 2017)
28 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Histories of banking and finance aren’t particularly well-known for being riveting, adventurous reads: they tend to be technical at the expense of b...
Fahad Bishara, “A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780-1950” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
03 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Fahad Bishara about his book A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780-1950 (Cambridge University Press...
Alexia Yates, “Selling Paris: Property and Commercial Culture in the Fin-de-siecle Capital” (Harvard UP, 2015)
12 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What comes to mind when you think of Paris in the nineteenth century? For me, its revolutionary politics, the circulation of increasing numbers of peo...
Kiran Klaus Patel, “The New Deal: A Global History” (Princeton UP, 2016)
12 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
There are as many New Deals as there are books on the subject. Yet only recently have historians begun to dig into the international dimensions of the...
Chris Miller, “The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy” (UNC Press, 2016)
29 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most interesting questions of modern history is this: Why is it that Communist China was able to make a successful transition to economic m...
Barbara Hahn and Bruce Baker, “The Cotton Kings: Capitalism and Corruption in Turn-of-the-Century New York and New Orleans” (Oxford UP, 2015)
16 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
With the recent economic collapse and rising income inequality, lessons drawn from turn-of-the century capitalism have become frequent. Pundits, polic...
Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch, “The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire” (Verso, 2013)
09 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Two Canadian socialist thinkers have published a new book on the successes and failures, the crises, contradictions and conflicts in present-day capit...
Martha C. Howell, “Commerce Before Capitalism in Europe, 1300-1600” (Cambridge UP, 2010)
17 Jul 2013
Contributed by Lukas
When I was an undergraduate, I was taught that merchants in early modern Western Europe were “proto-capitalists.” I was never quite sure what that...
Alec Foege, "The Tinkerers: The Amateurs, DIYers, and Inventors Who Make America Great" (Basic Books, 2013)
17 Jan 2013
Contributed by Lukas
From its earliest years, the United States was a nation of tinkerers: men and women who looked at the world around them and were able to create someth...
Rowan K. Flad, "Salt Production and Social Hierarchy in Ancient China" (Cambridge UP, 2011)
27 Apr 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Many of us try to be thoughtful about the ways that we incorporate (or try, at least, to incorporate) different modes of evidence into our attempts to...
Louis Hyman, “Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink” (Princeton UP, 2011)
04 Mar 2011
Contributed by Lukas
I remember clearly the day I was offered my first credit card. It was in Berkeley, CA in 1985. I was walking on Sproul Plaza and I saw a booth manned ...
Joyce Appleby, “The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism” (Norton, 2010)
04 Feb 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Today everybody wants to be a capitalist, even Chinese communists. It would be easy to think, then, that capitalism is “natural,” that there is a ...