New Books in Economic and Business History

Marcy Norton, "The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals after 1492" (Harvard UP, 2024)

11 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals after 1492 (Harvard University Press, 2024), Dr. Marcy Norton offers a dramatic new interpretation of t...

Kendra D. Boyd, "Freedom Enterprise: Black Entrepreneurship and Racial Capitalism in Detroit" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

10 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The Great Migration saw more than six million African Americans leave the US South between 1910 and 1970. Though the experiences of migrant laborers a...

David Morris, "Stealing The Future: Sam Bankman-Fried, Elite Fraud, and the Cult of Techno-Utopia" (Watkins Media, 2025)

05 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Stealing the Future is the first book to tell the true and full story of Sam Bankman-Fried and his historic crimes. It chronicles the $11 billion FTX...

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

04 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

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

Henry Grabar, "Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World" (Penguin, 2023)

01 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Parking, quite literally, has a death grip on America: each year a handful of Americans are tragically killed by their fellow citizens over parking sp...

Jordan Frith, "Barcode" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

31 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Barcodes are about as ordinary as an object can be. Billions of them are scanned each day and they impact everything from how we shop to how we travel...

Anna Zeide, "US History in 15 Foods" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

31 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From whiskey in the American Revolution to Spam in WWII, food reveals a great deal about the society in which it exists. Selecting 15 foods that repre...

Sara Byala, "Bottled: How Coca-Cola Became African" (Oxford UP, 2023)

30 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Travel to virtually any African country and you are likely to find a Coca-Cola, often a cold one at that. Bottled asks how this carbonated drink bec...

Kathryn Cornell Dolan, "Breakfast Cereal: A Global History" (Reaktion Books, 2023)

29 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Breakfast Cereal: A Global History (Reaktion, 2023) by Dr. Kathryn Dolan presents the long, distinguished and surprising history of breakfast cereal....

Sven Beckert, "Capitalism: A Global History" (Allen Lane, 2025)

25 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

No other phenomenon has shaped human history as decisively as capitalism. It structures how we live and work, how we think about ourselves and others,...

Simon Avenell, "A History of Postwar Japan: Recovery, Prosperity, and Transformation" (U Hawaii Press, 2025)

23 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This sweeping history tells the story of contemporary Japan from its defeat in the Asia-Pacific War in 1945 until the early decades of the new millenn...

Matthew Scobie and Anna Sturman, "The Economic Possibilities of Decolonisation" (Bridget Williams Books, 2024)

22 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What do the economics of decolonisation mean for the future of Aotearoa? This question drives the work of Dr. Matthew Scobie and Dr. Anna Sturman as t...

Molly-Claire Gillett, "Irish Lacemaking: Art, Industry and Cultural Practice" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

21 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Following the career of the Irish lace designer and inspector Emily Anderson (1856-1948), Irish Lacemaking: Art, Industry and Cultural Practice (Blo...

Maddalena Alvi, "The European Art Market and the First World War: Art, Capital, and the Decline of the Collecting Class, 1910–1925" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

17 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The outbreak of the First World War shattered the established European art market. Amidst fighting, looting, confiscations, expropriation fears and po...

Celina Su, "Budget Justice: On Building Grassroots Politics and Solidarities" (Princeton UP, 2025)

17 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Amid political repression and a deepening affordability crisis, Budget Justice: On Building Grassroots Politics and Solidarities (Princeton U...

Megan Tobias Neely, "Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street" (U California Press, 2022)

16 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street (U California Press, 2022) Megan Tobias Neely, a former hedge fund worker takes an ethno...

Mike Bird, "The Land Trap: A New History of the World's Oldest Asset" (Penguin, 2025)

14 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In The Land Trap (Portfolio / Penguin), Mike Bird—Wall Street editor at The Economist—reveals how this ancient asset still exerts outsize influe...

Kathryn Chelminski, "Governing Energy Transitions: A Study of Regime Complex Effectiveness on Geothermal Development in Indonesia and the Philippines" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

12 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As the world moves with increasing urgency to mitigate climate change and catalyze energy transitions to net zero, understanding the governance mechan...

Jack Wertheimer, "Jewish Giving: Philanthropy and the Shaping of American Jewish Life" (NYU Press, 2025)

10 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The American Jewish philanthropic enterprise is unparalleled in scope, dynamism, and the diversity of funders and the causes they support. Yet even as...

Thomas Haigh on the History of “AI” as a Brand

08 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Thomas Haigh, Professor and Chair of History and affiliate of the Department of Computer Science at Univ...

David Silkenat, "Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South" (Oxford UP, 2022)

08 Dec 2025

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...

Anny Gaul, "Nile Nightshade: An Egyptian Culinary History of the Tomato" (U California Press, 2025)

04 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

By the end of the twentieth century, the tomato—indigenous to the Americas—had become Egypt's top horticultural crop and a staple of Egyptian cuis...

Maria Bach, "Relocating Development Economics: The First Generation of Modern Indian Economists" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

03 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Originating in the Nineteenth Century, the European idea of development was shaped around the premise that the West possessed progressive characterist...

Jimmy Wales with Dan Gardner, "The Seven Rules of Trust: A Blueprint for Building Things That Last" (Crown Currency, 2025)

02 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In my interview with Jimmy Wales, father of Wikipedia, we celebrate his new book, The Seven Rules of Trust: A Blueprint for Building Things That Last...

Michael McCulloch, "Building a Social Contract: Modern Workers’ Houses in Early Twentieth-Century Detroit" (Temple UP, 2023)

30 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The dream of the modern worker’s house emerged in early twentieth-century America as wage earners gained access to new, larger, and better-equipped ...

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

28 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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

Meg Bernhard, "Wine" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

28 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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

Sabrina Mittermeier, "Fan Phenomena: Disney" (Intellect Books, 2023)

28 Nov 2025

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...

Fahad Ahmad Bishara, "Monsoon Voyagers: An Indian Ocean History" (U California Press, 2025)

27 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1924, the Al-A‘waj, also known as the Crooked, set sail from Kuwait on a trading journey around the Persian Gulf, through the Strait of Hormuz...

Lauren E. M. Everett, "Fortunate People in a Fortunate Land: At Home in Santa Monica's Rent-Controlled Housing" (Temple UP, 2025)

26 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Rent control and other tenant protections have profound and positive impacts on individuals’ and communities’ lives. Dr. Lauren Everett’s Fortu...

Amy Hughes, "An Actor's Tale: Theater, Culture, and Everyday Life in the Nineteenth-Century United States" (U Michigan Press, 2025)

24 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Harry Watkins was no one special. During a career that spanned four decades, this nineteenth-century actor yearned for fame but merely skirted the edg...

Verena Halsmayer on Managing Growth in Miniature: Solow’s Model as an Artifact

24 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, chats with Verena Halsmeyer, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Vienna, about her recent, award-winning boo...

Emily Callaci, "Wages for Housework: The Feminist Fight Against Unpaid Labor" (Seal Press, 2025)

20 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Across the globe in the 1970s, a network of feminists distilled their struggles into a single demand: Wages for Housework! Today, it remains a provo...

Christina Jerne, "Opposition by Imitation: The Economics of Italian Anti-Mafia Activism" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

19 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For more than 150 years, Italy has been home to a resilient and evolving resistance against the pervasive influence of mafias. While these criminal or...

Carl Benedikt Frey, "How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations" (Princeton UP, 2025)

19 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations (Princeton University Press, 2025), Carl Benedikt Frey challenges the convent...

Vanessa S. Williamson, "The Price of Democracy: The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in American History" (Basic Books, 2025)

18 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Americans have always fought over the meaning of freedom and equality. What is not commonly recognized is that the battles most pivotal in defining ou...

Thomas Piketty, "A Brief History of Equality" (Harvard UP, 2022)

17 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It's easy to be pessimistic about inequality. We know it has increased dramatically in many parts of the world over the past two generations. No one h...

Joe Allen, "The Package King: A Rank and File History of UPS" (Haymarket Books, 2020)

16 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

If the 20th Century was the American Century, it was also UPS's Century. Joe Allen's The Package King: A Rank and File History of UPS (‎Haymarket ...

Pierre-Yves Donzé & Maki Umemura, "Pierre-Yves Donzé & Maki Umemura, Japan and the Great Divergence in Business History" (JESB, 2025)

13 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For much of the late 20th century, Japanese business historians were core contributors to the global field. They published, collaborated, and shaped d...

How Government Made the U.S. into a Manufacturing Powerhouse

10 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Colleen Dunlavy, Emeritus Professor of History at University of Wisconsin-Madison, about her recent book...

Joseph Stiglitz, "The Origins of Inequality" (Oxford UP, 2025)

10 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Joseph E. Stiglitz has had a remarkable career. He is a brilliant academic, capped by sharing the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics and the Nobel Peac...

Fahad Ahmad Bishara, "Monsoon Voyagers: An Indian Ocean History" (U California Press, 2025)

06 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Monsoon Voyagers follows the voyage of a single dhow (sailing vessel), the Crooked, along with its captain and crew, from Kuwait to port cities around...

Charles Watkins, "Trees Ancient and Modern: Woodland Cultures and Conservation" (Reaktion, 2025)

05 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Charles Watkins joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book, Trees Ancient and Modern (Reaktion, 2025). This delightful new book explores the relati...

William J. Glover, "Reformatting Agrararian Life: Urban History from the Countryside in Colonial India" (Stanford UP, 2025)

05 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Reformatting Agrarian Life presents a stealth urban history from the countryside that foregrounds the mutual entanglements of agrarian and urban expe...

Loic De Canniere, "The Future of Employment in Africa: Demography, Labour Markets and Welfare" (Anthem, 2025)

04 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Future of Employment in Africa: Demography, Labor Markets and Welfare explores the major trends that will define the face of the sub-Saharan conti...

Linda Upham-Bornstein, "'Mr. Taxpayer versus Mr. Tax Spender': Taxpayers’ Associations, Pocketbook Politics, and the Law during the Great Depression" (Temple UP, 2023)

02 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

During the Great Depression, the proliferation of local taxpayers’ associations was dramatic and unprecedented. The justly concerned members of thes...

Peter McAteer, "Leading the Sustainable Organization: The Quest for Ethical Brands and a Culture of Sustainable Innovation" (Anthem Press, 2025)

02 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Never before have we been presented with the prospect of redesigning business at scale to create a more sustainable future for our planet and the peop...

Maxim Sytch, "The Influence Economy: Decoding Supplier-Induced Demand" (Oxford UP, 2025)

01 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In The Influence Economy: Decoding Supplier-Induced Demand (Oxford UP, 2025), Maxim Sytch reveals how professional services--consulting, marketi...

Edmond Smith, "Ruthless: A New History of Britain’s Rise to Wealth and Power, 1660-1800" (Yale UP, 2025)

28 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Was Britain’s industrial revolution the result of its machines, which produced goods with miraculous efficiency? Was it the country’s natural abun...

Daniel B. Rood, "The Reinvention of Atlantic Slavery: Technology, Labor, Race, and Capitalism in the Greater Caribbean" (Oxford UP, 2020)

27 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The period of the "second slavery" was marked by geographic expansion of zones of slavery into the Upper US South, Cuba, and Brazil and chronological ...

Hector Vera, "Yardstick Nation: The Metric System in America" (Vanderbilt UP, 2025)

25 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why is there no metric system in the United States? Why is it that a country known for its openness to the future, its scientific innovations, and its...

Jeff Neilson, "Fortress Farming: Agrarian Transitions, Livelihoods, and Coffee Value Chains in Indonesia" (Cornell UP, 2025)

25 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Over the last several decades, sources of income derived away from farms have come to play a much bigger role in rural Indonesian households. How do r...

Scott D. Anthony, "Epic Disruptions: 11 Innovations That Shaped Our Modern World" (Harvard Business Review Press, 2025)

24 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Epic Disruptions: 11 Innovations That Shaped Our Modern World (Harvard Business Review Press, 2025) arrives at the perfect moment as artificial inte...

Robert C. Bird, "Legal Knowledge in Organizations: A Source of Strategic and Competitive Advantage" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

23 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Legal Knowledge in Organizations: A Source of Strategic and Competitive Advantage (Cambridge UP, 2025) offers a step-by-step guide on how to utilize...

Alice Lovejoy, "Tales of Militant Chemistry: The Film Factory in a Century of War" (U California Press, 2025)

23 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The history of film calls to mind unforgettable photographs, famous directors, and the glitz and hustle of the media business. But there is another ta...

Stuart Hart, "Beyond Shareholder Primacy: Remaking Capitalism for a Sustainable Future" (Stanford Business Books, 2024)

22 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Beyond Shareholder Primacy: Remaking Capitalism for a Sustainable Future (Stanford Business Books, 2024) Hart argues that the current Milt...

Deborah Gordon, "No Standard Oil: Managing Abundant Petroleum in a Warming World" (Oxford UP, 2021)

20 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In No Standard Oil: Managing Abundant Petroleum in a Warming World (Oxford University Press, 2021), Deborah Gordon shows that no two oils or gases a...

Christopher F. Jones, "The Invention of Infinite Growth: How Economists Forgot About the Natural World" (Simon and Schuster, 2025)

18 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Most economists believe that growth is the surest path to better lives. This has proven to be one of humanity’s most powerful and dangerous ideas. I...

Nancy Newman, "Songs and Sounds of the Anti-Rent Movement in Upstate New York: Including Twenty-Two New Settings of Period Tunes" (SUNY Press, 2025)

18 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Upstate New York's Anti-Rent Movement is considered the last struggle over feudalism in the United States. Tenant farmers in the Hudson-Mohawk region ...

Kelley Helmstutler Di Dio, "Shipping Sculptures from Early Modern Italy: The Mechanics, Costs, Risks, and Rewards" (Brepols, 2025)

17 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Shipping Sculptures from Early Modern Italy: The Mechanics, Costs, Risks, and Rewards (Brepols, 2025) by Dr. Kelley Helmstutler Di Dio focuses on eno...

Carl Benedikt Frey, "How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations" (Princeton UP, 2025)

17 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations (Princeton UP, 2025), Carl Benedikt Frey challenges the conventional belief th...

Maggie Gram, "The Invention of Design: A Twentieth-Century History" (Basic Books, 2025)

16 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Maggie Gram is a writer, cultural historian, and designer. She leads an experience-design team at Google. She has taught at the Maryland Institute Col...

Emily Gee, "Hostel, House and Chambers: Accommodating the Victorian and Edwardian Working Woman" (Liverpool UP, 2025)

15 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hostel, House and Chambers: Accommodating the Victorian and Edwardian Working Woman (Liverpool University Press, 2025) by Emily Gee is the first comp...

Ethan A. Everett, "The Investment Philosophers: Financial Lessons from the Great Thinkers" (Columbia Business School, 2025)

13 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What do Warren Buffett and Friedrich Nietzsche have in common? Why does Baruch Spinoza’s understanding of irrational emotions help explain financial...

David Singerman, "Unrefined: How Capitalism Reinvented Sugar" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

11 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Sugar is everywhere in the western diet, blamed for epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and other modern maladies. Our addiction to sweetness has a long a...

Anthony J. Knowles, "Driving Productivity: Automation, Labor, and Industrial Development in the United States and Germany" (Brill, 2025)

09 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Driving Productivity: Automation, Labor, and Industrial Development in the United States and Germany (Brill, 2025) reconstructs the industrial histo...

Maria Fedorova, "Seeds of Exchange: Soviets, Americans, and Cooperation in Agriculture, 1921–1935" (Northern Illinois UP, 2025)

09 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Seeds of Exchange: Soviets, Americans, and Cooperation in Agriculture, 1921–1935 (Northern Illinois UP, 2025) examines the US and Soviet exchange ...

Aram G. Sarkisian, "Orthodoxy on the Line: Russian Orthodox Christians and Labor Migration in the Progressive Era" (NYU Press, 2025)

08 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Orthodoxy on the Line: Russian Orthodox Christians and Labor Migration in the Progressive Era (NYU Press, 2025) is an Immigration and labor history o...

Michael Glass, "Cracked Foundations: Debt and Inequality in Suburban America" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

07 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How debt and speculation financed the suburban American dream and led to today’s inequalities In the popular imagination, the suburbs are synonymou...

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

06 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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

Katherine J. Parkin, "The Abortion Market: Buying and Selling Access in the Era Before Roe" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

06 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The abortion market was a powerful economic force in American life. Before legalization lowered the cost, one million women each year collectively pai...

Marcia C. Schenck, "Remembering African Labor Migration to the Second World: Socialist Mobilities between Angola, Mozambique, and East Germany" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)

05 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This open access book is about Mozambicans and Angolans who migrated in state-sponsored schemes to East Germany in the late 1970s and throughout the 1...

Carlotta Daro, "The Architecture of the Wire: Infrastructures of Telecommunication" (MIT Press, 2025)

05 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Architecture of the Wire explores the development of telecommunications infrastructure and its impact on the architectural and urban culture of t...

Emília Barna, "Working in Music on the Semi-Periphery: Local Cultural Production and Global Capitalism" (CEU Press, 2025)

03 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press) sat down with Emília Barna to discuss her new book, Working in Music on the Semiperiphery: Local C...

Eric T. Jennings, "Vanilla: The History of an Extraordinary Bean" (Yale UP, 2025)

02 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Vanilla is one of the most expensive of flavorings—so valuable that it was smuggled or stolen by pirates in the early days—and yet it is everywher...

John L. Campbell, "Pay Up!: Conservative Myths about Tax Cuts for the Rich" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

27 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Since the Reagan era, conservatives in the United States have championed cutting taxes, especially for wealthy individuals and corporations, as the be...

Thea Riofrancos, "Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism" (W.W. Norton, 2025)

26 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism (W.W. Norton, 2025) is an in-depth analysis into the growing industry of green technologies and the...

Mary E. Hicks, "Captive Cosmopolitans: Black Mariners and the World of South Atlantic Slavery" (Omohundro Institute and UNC Press, 2025)

26 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From the bustling ports of Lisbon to the coastal inlets of the Bight of Benin to the vibrant waterways of Bahia, Black mariners were integral to every...

Paris Papamichos Chronakis, "The Business of Transition: Jewish and Greek Merchants of Salonica from Ottoman to Greek Rule" (Stanford UP, 2024)

25 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Business of Transition: Jewish and Greek Merchants of Salonica from Ottoman to Greek Rule (Stanford UP, 2024) examines how the cosmopolitan bourg...

Debra Michals, "She's the Boss: The Rise of Women’s Entrepreneurship since World War II" (Rutgers UP, 2025)

25 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the years after World War II, as women were being pushed from wartime jobs for returning soldiers, government and business leaders—and women them...

Edward Fishman, "Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare" (Portfolio, 2025)

23 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

“The acme of skill,” Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, is not “to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles,” but “to subdue the enemy...

Bob Wyss, "Black Gold: The Rise, Reign, and Fall of American Coal" (University of California Press, 2025)

22 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For decades coal has been crucial to America's culture, society, and environment, an essential ingredient in driving out winter's cold, cooking meals,...

Karen Robert, "Driving Terror: Labor, Violence, and Justice in Cold War Argentina" (U New Mexico Press, 2025)

21 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Driving Terror: Labor, Violence, and Justice in Cold War Argentina (U New Mexico Press, 2025) by Dr. Karen Robert tells the story of twenty-four Ford...

Calvin Schermerhorn, "The Plunder of Black America: How the Racial Wealth Gap Was Made" (Yale UP, 2025)

21 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. J Calvin Schermerhorn is a professor of history in the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. Hi...

Victoria Bateman, "Economica: A Global History of Women, Wealth and Power" (Seal Press, 2025)

20 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How many female entrepreneurs, economic revolutionaries, merchants, and industrialists can you name? You would be forgiven for thinking that, until ve...

Bradley A. Gorski, "Cultural Capitalism: Literature and the Market After Socialism" (Northern Illinois UP, 2025)

19 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Bradley Gorski, a literary and culture scholar, examines the breakneck commercialization of Russian book publishing and of Russian literature more bro...

Lucy Sante, "Nineteen Reservoirs: On Their Creation and the Promise of Water for New York City (The Experiment, 2022)

14 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From 1907 to 1967, a network of reservoirs and aqueducts was built across more than one million acres in upstate New York, including Greene, Delaware,...

Nidhi Mahajan, "Moorings: Voyages of Capital across the Indian Ocean" (U of California Press, 2025)

13 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Moorings: Voyages of Capital across the Indian Ocean (U of California Press, 2025) follows sailors from the Gulf of Kachchh in India as they voyage ...

Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl, "Crusading for Globalization: US Multinationals and Their Opponents Since 1945" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

11 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Crusading for Globalization: US Multinationals and Their Opponents Since 1945 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025) tells the story of an extrao...

David Welsh, "The Social Railway and Its Workers in Europes Modern Era, 1880-2023: Moments of Fury, Ramparts of Hope" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

10 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Social Railway and Its Workers in Europe’s Modern Era, 1880-2023: Moments of Fury, Ramparts of Hope (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. David Welsh exami...

Jumping Through Hoops: Performing Gender in the 19th Century Circus

09 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Jumping Through Hoops: Performing Gender in the 19th Century Circus, by Betsy Golden Kellem, reveals the hidden history of early female circus perfo...

William Kelleher Storey, "The Colonialist: The Vision of Cecil Rhodes" (Oxford UP, 2025)

08 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Cecil John Rhodes became one of the most influential people in the history of the British Empire. He made a fortune in South Africa by leading the wor...

David J. Lynch, "The World's Worst Bet: How the Globalization Gamble Went Wrong (And What Would Make It Right)" (PublicAffairs, 2025)

05 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The triumphant globalization that began in the 1990s has given way to a world riven by conflict, populism, and economic nationalism. In The World's W...

Dan Roche, "Eyes by Hand: Prosthetics of Art and Healing" (MIT Press, 2025)

05 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Eyes by Hand: Prosthetics of Art and Healing (MIT Press, 2025) is a book about artificial eyes—about the artisans and artists who make them, and ab...

David McNally, "Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History" (U California Press, 2025)

03 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

David McNally's Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History (U California Press, 2025)presents the first systematic Marxist account of the capital...

Maren A. Ehlers, "Give and Take: Poverty and the Status Order in Early Modern Japan" (Harvard U Asia Center, 2018)

02 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Maren A. Ehlers’s Give and Take: Poverty and the Status Order in Early Modern Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2018) examines the ways in whic...

Tia Sahrakorpi on a Use-Based History of Electricity in Finland

01 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Tiia Sahrakorpi, Visiting Professor at Weber State University, about her interesting book project, Our ...

Joshua Specht, "Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America" (Princeton UP, 2019)

31 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why do Americans eat so much beef? In Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America (Princeton University Press, 2019), the h...

Laura Murphy, "Freedomville: The Story of a 21st-Century Slave Revolt" (Columbia Global Reports, 2021)

30 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A celebrated revolution brought freedom to a group of enslaved people in northern India. Or did it? Millions of people around the world today are ens...

Daniel Wortel-London, "The Menace of Prosperity: New York City and the Struggle for Economic Development, 1865–1981" (U of Chicago Press, 2025)

30 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Many local policymakers make decisions based on a deep-seated belief: what’s good for the rich is good for cities. Convinced that local finances dep...