New Books in Economic and Business History
Episodes
Alice Wiemers, "Village Work: Development and Rural Statecraft in Twentieth-Century Ghana" (Ohio UP, 2021)
28 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Most development histories focus on large-scale projects and multi-year plans. But how would we understand development differently if we chose a diffe...
Elliot Dolan-Evans, "Making War Safe for Capitalism: The World Bank, IMF, and the Conflict in Ukraine" (Bristol UP, 2025)
28 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Making War Safe for Capitalism: The World Bank, IMF, and the Conflict in Ukraine (Bristol UP, 2025) by Dr. Elliot Dolan-Evans examines the impact of ...
Margaret S. Graves, "Invisible Hands: Fabrication, Forgery, and the Art of Islamic Ceramics" (Princeton UP, 2026)
27 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the heyday of Islamic art collecting around the turn of the twentieth century, thousands of premodern ceramic objects circulated on the internation...
Ilana Gershon, "The Pandemic Workplace: How We Learned to Be Citizens in the Office" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
25 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A provocative book arguing that the workplace is where we learn to live democratically. In The Pandemic Workplace: How We Learned to Be Citizens in t...
Paolo Zannoni, "Money and Promises: Seven Deals That Changed the World" (Columbia Business School, 2024)
24 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In Money and Promises: Seven Deals That Changed the World, the distinguished banker, executive, and historian Paolo Zannoni examines the c...
Michelle Jackson, "The Division of Rationalized Labor" (Harvard UP, 2025)
21 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
How have jobs changed in the last 150 years? In The Division of Rationalized Labor (Harvard UP, 2025) Michelle Jackson, an Associate Profess...
Raiford Guins, "King PONG: How Atari Bounced Across Markets to Make Millions" (MIT Press, 2026)
20 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
PONG is one of the longest- and most consistently circulating video games. Released in 1972, it remains at our fingertips as Android or iOS app, hoste...
W. Patrick McCray, "README: A Bookish History of Computing from Electronic Brains to Everything Machines" (MIT Press, 2025)
19 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In README: A Bookish History of Computing from Electronic Brains to Everything Machines (MIT Press, 2025), historian Dr. Patrick McCray argues that ...
Denys Gorbach, "The Making and Unmaking of the Ukrainian Working Class: Everyday Politics and Moral Economy in a Post-Soviet City" (Berghahn Books, 2024)
19 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Industrial workers in Ukraine have a complex political lifeworld because their political action aimed at bringing radical social change coexists with ...
Donald Chew, "The Making of Modern Corporate Finance: A History of the Ideas and How They Help Build the Wealth of Nations" (Columbia Business School Publishing, 2025)
18 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In The Making of Modern Corporate Finance: A History of the Ideas and How They Help Build the Wealth of Nations (Columbia Business School Publish...
Sara Pennell & Jon Stobart, "Auctions and the Consumption of Second-Hand Goods in Georgian England" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
17 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Auctions and the Consumption of Second-Hand Goods in Georgian England (Bloomsbury, 2026) by Dr. Sara Pennell & Professor Jon Stobart provides the fir...
David Obst, "Saving Ourselves from Big Car" (Columbia Business School Publishing, 2025)
17 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Streetwise: Saving Ourselves from Big Car (Columbia Business School Publishing, 2025) exposes how “Big Car”―the complex of companies in the au...
Bridget Salmon and Andrew Godley, "The Making of the Modern Supermarket: Self-Service Adoption in British Food Retailing, 1950-1975" (Oxford UP, 2025)
12 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What seems mundane today—walking into a supermarket, picking up goods, and paying at a checkout—was once a radical experiment. In our latest New B...
Javiera Barandiaran, "Living Minerals: Nature, Trade, and Power in the Race for Lithium" (MIT Press, 2026)
12 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A sobering investigation of the rush for lithium for electric vehicles, the problematic history of lithium mining, and the consequences for sustainabi...
Peter S. Goodman, "Davos Man: How the Billionaire Class Devoured Democracy" (Custom House, 2022)
09 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Drawing on decades of experience covering the global economy, New York Times' journalist Peter S. Goodman profiles five representative Davos Men-memb...
Luca Cottini, "The Rise of Americanism in Italy, 1888-1919" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
02 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries marked a pivotal time for the United States as the nation emerged as a political and industrial powe...
Stevan Harrell, "An Ecological History of Modern China" (U Washington Press, 2023)
01 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Is environmental degradation an inevitable result of economic development? Can ecosystems be restored once government officials and the public are com...
Mark Harrison, "Secret Leviathan: Secrecy and State Capacity under Soviet Communism" (Stanford UP, 2023)
31 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The Soviet Union was one of the most secretive states that ever existed. Defended by a complex apparatus of rules and checks administered by the secre...
Nathan Munier, "Zimbabwe's Diamond Trade: The State, Resource Politics and Development" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
31 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when states experience a rapid increase in resource wealth? This book examines the significant diamond find in eastern Zimbabwe in 2006, ...
Blair Kelley, "Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class" (LIveright, 2023)
31 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the United States, the stoicism and importance of the “working class” is part of the national myth. The term is often used to conjure the contr...
Robert Yee, "The City's Defense: The Bank of England and the Remaking of Economic Governance, 1914-1939" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
30 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In The City's Defense: The Bank of England and the Remaking of Economic Governance, 1914-1939, Robert Yee examines how the City of London maint...
Bram de Maeyer, "Building for Belgium: Belgian Embassies in a Globalising World (1945-2020)" (Leuven UP, 2025)
28 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Embassy buildings are the most tangible evidence of a state’s diplomatic presence abroad. State authorities have invested in the architectural conce...
Misty L. Heggeness, "Swiftynomics: How Women Mastermind and Redefine Our Economy" (U California Press, 2026)
27 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A feminist romp through pop culture that illuminates how women influence and shape the economy. Taylor Swift isn't just a pop megastar. She is a work...
Toby Green, "The Heretic of Cacheu: Crispina Peres and the Struggle over Life in Seventeenth-Century West Africa" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
27 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The Heretic of Cacheu: Crispina Peres and the Struggle over Life in Seventeenth-Century West Africa (U Chicago Press, 2025) by Professor Toby Green t...
Nena Vandeweerdt, "Women and Work Through a Comparative Lens: Gender and the Urban Labor Markets of Premodern Brabant and Biscay" (Leuven UP, 2025)
25 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Women and Work Through a Comparative Lens: Gender and the Urban Labor Markets of Premodern Brabant and Biscay explores women's economic roles in l...
Matteo Gatti, "Corporate Power and the Politics of Change" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
25 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In Corporate Power and the Politics of Change (Cambridge UP, 2025), Matteo Gatti examines how corporations have taken on roles traditionally reserve...
Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, "Basketball Empire: France and the Making of a Global NBA and WNBA" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
24 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Dr. Lindsay Krasnoff, who is an historian, specializing in global sport, communications and diplomacy. She is also the Director...
Colin Mayer, "Capitalism and Crises: How to Fix Them" (Oxford UP, 2024)
22 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The world is encountering multiple crises - climate, droughts, floods, energy, food, and pandemics, to name a few. Capitalism and Crises: How to Fix ...
Emilie Connolly, "Vested Interests: Trusteeship and Native Dispossession in the United States" (Princeton UP, 2025)
21 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
From the earliest days of its founding, the United States set its sights on Native territory. Amid better-known “Indian wars,” the federal governm...
Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado, "Taco" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
19 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Taco (Bloomsbury, 2025) is a deep dive into the most iconic Mexican food from the perspective of a Mexico City native. In a narrative that moves from...
Malcolm Harris, "Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World" (Little, Brown, 2023)
19 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Palo Alto is nice. The weather is temperate, the people are educated, rich, healthy, enterprising. Remnants of a hippie counterculture have synthesize...
Ines Prodöhl, "Globalizing the Soybean: Fat, Feed, and Sometimes Food, c. 1900–1950" (Routledge, 2023)
18 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Ines Prodöhl’s Globalizing the Soybean: Fat, Feed, and Sometimes Food, c. 1900-1950 (Routledge, 2023) is a history of how, why, and where the soy...
John M. Findlay, "The Mobilized American West, 1940-2000" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)
18 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
At the end of the 1930s, the West was in peril. A cultural and economic backwater, the Great Depression had all-but wiped out the extractive industri...
Aija Leiponen, "Digital Innovation Strategy" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
14 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Based on applied economics and from the perspective of an innovator seeking to develop a new digital business, Digital Innovation Strategy (Ca...
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...