New Books in Economic and Business History
Episodes
Himanshu Upadhyaya, "Critical Insights on Colonial Modes of Seeing Cattle in India (1850–1980)" (Springer, 2024)
25 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Critical Insights on Colonial Modes of Seeing Cattle in India: Tracing the Pre-history of Green and White Revolutions (Springer 2024) traces the cont...
Deborah Valenze, "The Invention of Scarcity: Malthus and the Margins of History" (Yale UP, 2023)
24 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A radical new reading of eighteenth-century British theorist Thomas Robert Malthus, which recovers diverse ideas about subsistence production and envi...
Anto Mohsin, "Electrifying Indonesia: Technology and Social Justice in National Development" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023)
21 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Electrifying Indonesia: Technology and Social Justice in National Development (U Wisconsin Press, 2023) tells the story of the entanglement of politi...
Kevin Sanson, "Mobile Hollywood: Labor and the Geography of Production" (U California Press, 2024)
20 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is the future of the film industry? In Mobile Hollywood Labor and the Geography of Production (U California Press, 2024), Kevin Sanson, Prof...
Michael J. Alarid, "Hispano Bastion: New Mexican Power in the Age of Manifest Destiny, 1837-1860" (U New Mexico Press, 2022)
19 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Hispano Bastion: New Mexican Power in the Age of Manifest Destiny, 1837-1860 (University of New Mexico Press, 2023), historian Dr. Michael J. Ala...
Peter C. Kunze, "Staging a Comeback: Broadway, Hollywood, and the Disney Renaissance" (Rutgers UP, 2023)
19 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 1980s, Walt Disney Productions was struggling, largely bolstered by the success of its theme parks. Within fifteen years, however, it had...
Andrew G. Walder, “China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed” (Harvard UP, 2015)
18 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that 1949 was actually the beginning, not the end, of the Chinese revolution." Building from this premise,...
Corey Ross, "Liquid Empire: Water and Power in the Colonial World" (Princeton UP, 2024)
17 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a handful of powerful European states controlled more than a third of the land surface of the planet. These...
Tevi Troy, "The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between Commanders in Chief and Titans of Industry" (Regnery History, 2024)
16 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When U.S. presidents clash with corporate titans, what tips the balance of power? In The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between Commanders in ...
Christian Velasco, "Commercial Banking in Kenya: A History from Colonisation to Digital Age" (Routledge, 2024)
15 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Commercial Banking in Kenya: A History from Colonisation to Digital Age (Routledge, 2024) investigates the impact of commercial banks in Kenya right ...
Juan José Rivas Moreno, "The Capital Market of Manila and the Pacific Trade, 1668-1838" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)
07 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Economic history has always emphasized the importance of long-distance trade in the emergence of modern financial markets, yet almost nothing is known...
A Deep Dive on Karl Marx's "Capital"
07 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Over 150 years ago, Marx published the first volume of Capital, a systematic and voluminous account of capitalism, from the economic bedrock all the ...
Bananapocalypse: Plantation Southeast Asia and Its Many Afterlives
06 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This episode focuses on a cluster of issues of longstanding significance in Southeast Asia and in Southeast Asian Studies – plantation agriculture, ...
Israel G. Solares, "Underground Leviathan: Corporate Sovereignty and Mining in the Americas" (U Nevada Press, 2024)
05 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Underground Leviathan: Corporate Sovereignty and Mining in the Americas (U Nevada Press, 2024) explores the emergence, dynamics, and lasting impacts ...
Jeffrey Ding, "Technology and the Rise of Great Powers: How Diffusion Shapes Economic Competition" (Princeton UP, 2024)
05 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When scholars and policymakers consider how technological advances affect the rise and fall of great powers, they draw on theories that center the mom...
Robert Rozett, "Conscripted Slaves: Hungarian Jewish Forced Laborers on the Eastern Front During the Second World War" (Yad Vashem, 2014)
04 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From the spring of 1942 until the summer of 1944, some 45,000 Jewish men were forced to accompany Hungarian troops to the battle zone of the Soviet Un...
Sean McMeekin, "To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism" (Basic Books, 2024)
04 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When the USSR collapsed in 1991, the world was certain that Communism was dead. Today, three decades later, it is clear that it was not. While Russia ...
Mary Bridges, "Dollars and Dominion: US Bankers and the Making of a Superpower" (Princeton UP, 2024)
01 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There was nothing inevitable or natural about the rise of US finance capitalism in the early twentieth century. In Dollars and Dominion: US Bankers...
Paola Bertucci, "In the Land of Marvels: Science, Fabricated Realities, and Industrial Espionage in the Age of the Grand Tour" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)
01 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How a journey through Italy casts light on secrets, stereotypes, and the manipulation of information in eighteenth-century science. In 1749, the celeb...
James A. Anderson, "The Dong World and Imperial China's Southwest Silk Road: Trade, Security, and State Formation" (U Washington Press, 2024)
30 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From the eighth to thirteenth centuries along China’s rugged southern periphery, trade in tribute articles and an interregional horse market thrived...
Annette Kehnel, "The Green Ages: Medieval Innovations in Sustainability" (Brandeis UP, 2024)
29 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Annette Kehnel joins Jana Byars to talk about The Green Ages: Medieval Innovations in Sustainability (Brandeis University Press, 2024). A fascinati...
Inés Valdez, "Democracy and Empire: Labor, Nature, and the Reproduction of Capitalism" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
29 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In scholarly and popular discourse, popular sovereignty and self-determination are typically conceived of as the antitheses of imperialism, while hist...
William T. Taylor, "Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History" (U California Press, 2024)
29 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From the Rockies to the Himalayas, the bond between horses and humans has spanned across time and civilizations. In this archaeological journey, Willi...
Samuel J. Hirst, "Against the Liberal Order: The Soviet Union, Turkey, and Statist Internationalism, 1919-1939" (Oxford UP, 2024)
28 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the aftermath of the First World War the Western great powers sought to redefine international norms according to their liberal vision. They introd...
Ian Williams, "Vampire State: The Rise and Fall of the Chinese Economy (Birlinn, 2024)
27 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
State capitalism. Socialism with Chinese characteristics. A socialist market economy. There have been numerous descriptions of the Chinese economy. Ho...
Jeff Schuhrke, "Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of U.S. Labor’s Global Anticommunist Crusade" (Verso, 2024)
27 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How the CIA used American unions to undermine workers at home and subvert democracy abroad. Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of U.S. Labor’s Glo...
Zeev Levin, "Collectivization and Social Engineering: Soviet Administration and the Jews of Uzbekistan, 1917-1939" (Brill, 2015)
26 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Collectivization and Social Engineering: Soviet Administration and the Jews of Uzbekistan, 1917-1939 (Brill, 2015), Zeev Levin seeks to provide ...
Andrew W. Kahrl, "The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
25 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America (U Chicago Press, 2024), Andrew W. Kahrl uncovers the history of in...
Joseph Harley, "At Home with the Poor: Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in England, c.1650-1850" (Manchester UP, 2024)
25 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
At Home with the Poor: Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in England, c.1650-1850 (Manchester UP, 2024) by Dr. Joseph Harley opens the doors to...
Aaron Reeves and Sam Friedman, "Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite" (Harvard UP, 2024)
25 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Who runs Britain? In Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite (Harvard UP, 2024), Aaron Reeves, and Sam Friedman, both Professo...
Max Hirsh and Till Mostowlansky, "Infrastructure and the Remaking of Asia" (U Hawaii Press, 2022)
24 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the twenty-first century, infrastructure has undergone a seismic shift from West to East. Once concentrated in Europe and North America, global inf...
Emily Carman, "Independent Stardom: Freelance Women in the Hollywood Studio System" (U Texas Press, 2016)
23 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
During the heyday of Hollywood’s studio system, stars were carefully cultivated and promoted, but at the price of their independence. This familiar ...
Ilias Alami and Adam D. Dixon, "The Spectre of State Capitalism" (Oxford UP, 2024)
22 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
After close to three decades of the hegemony of free market ideas, the state has made a big comeback as an economic actor since the 2008 financial cri...
Beng Huat Chua, "Public Subsidy, Private Accumulation: The Political Economy of Singapore's Public Housing" (NUS Press, 2024)
19 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The achievement of Singapore’s national public housing program is impressive by any standard. Within a year of its first election victory in 1959, t...
Karl Marx, "Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1" (Princeton UP, 2024)
16 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Karl Marx (1818-1883) was living in exile in England when he embarked on an ambitious, multivolume critique of the capitalist system of production. Th...
Thomas White, "China's Camel Country: Livestock and Nation-Building at a Pastoral Frontier" (U Washington Press, 2024)
14 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
China today positions itself as a model of state-led environmentalism. On the country’s arid rangelands, grassland conservation policies have target...
Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, "When a Dream Dies: Agriculture, Iowa, and the Farm Crisis of the 1980s" (UP of Kansas, 2022)
13 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Unlike a flood or fire, a the Farming Crisis of the 1980s did not have a set beginning of ending. Rather, it was a rolling, often invisible, disaster...
Yakov Feygin, "Building a Ruin: The Cold War Politics of Soviet Economic Reform" (Harvard UP, 2024)
08 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A masterful account of the global Cold War’s decisive influence on Soviet economic reform, and the national decay that followed. What brought down t...
Alison Fragale, "Likeable Badass: The New Science of Successful Women" (Doubleday Books, 2024)
07 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Behavioral scientist Alison Fragale offers powerful new insights and a practical playbook for women to advance in any workplace, full of tips, tricks,...
The Epic Story of America's Great Migration: A Talk by Isabel Wilkerson
07 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 2010, Isabel Wilkerson spoke to the Institute about the fifteen years she spent reporting and writing her book, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic...
David Chaffetz, "Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires" (Norton, 2024)
05 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
After reading David Chaffetz’s newest book, you’d think that the horse–not oil–has been humanity’s most important strategic commodity. As Da...
David Lay Williams, "The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought from Plato to Marx" (Princeton UP, 2024)
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Political Theorist David Lay Williams has a new book that traces the problem of economic inequality through the thought of many of the canonical think...
Aaron M. Hyman, "Rubens in Repeat: The Logic of the Copy in Colonial Latin America" (Getty, 2021)
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) never crossed the Atlantic himself, but his impact in colonial Latin America was profound. Prints made after the Flemi...
Manuela Moschella, "Unexpected Revolutionaries: How Central Banks Made and Unmade Economic Orthodoxy" (Cornell UP, 2024)
01 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Unexpected Revolutionaries: How Central Banks Made and Unmade Economic Orthodoxy (Cornell University Press, 2024), Dr. Manuela Moschella investig...
Henry H. Work, "Wood, Whiskey and Wine: A History of Barrels"(Reaktion Books, 2024)
01 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Barrels – we rarely acknowledge their importance, but without them we would be missing out on some of the world’s finest wines and spirits. For ov...
Cynthia A. Ruder, “Building Stalinism: The Moscow Canal and the Creation of Soviet Space” (I. B. Tauris, 2018)
31 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Building Stalinism: The Moscow Canal and the Creation of Soviet Space (I. B. Tauris, 2018), Cynthia Ruder explores how the building of the Mosc...
Susan Greenhalgh, "Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
31 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola (U Chicago Press, 2024) takes readers deep inside the secret world of corporate science, where powe...
Aleksander Pluskowski, "The Teutonic Knights: Rise and Fall of a Religious Corporation" (Reaktion, 2024)
30 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Aleksander Pluskowski of the University of Reading joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book, The Teutonic Knights: Rise and Fall of a Religious C...
Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: : The Horse and the Rise of Empires
30 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
No animal is so entangled in human history as the horse. The thread starts in prehistory, with a slight, shy animal, hunted for food. Domesticating th...
Cyrus Mody on the Importance of Square (as in NOT COOL) Scientists and Engineers
26 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Cyrus Mody, Professor in the History of Science, Technology, and Innovation and Director of the STS Progra...
Robert Vitalis, "Oilcraft: The Myths of Scarcity and Security That Haunt U.S. Energy Policy" (Stanford UP, 2020)
26 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We've heard and rehearsed the conventional wisdom about oil: that the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf is what guarantees access to this str...
Damaging Rationality: Exxon-Funded Legal Research and the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
25 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is part #3 of a the (ir)Rational Alaskans, a Cited Podcast mini-series that re-examines the legacy of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. In the la...
Gary Mucciaroni, "Answers to the Labour Question: Industrial Relations and the State in the Anglophone World, 1880–1945" (U Toronto Press, 2024)
24 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since the mid-nineteenth century, public officials, reformers, journalists, and other elites have referred to “the labour question.” The labour qu...
Robin Bernstein, "Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
23 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the early nineteenth century, as slavery gradually ended in the North, a village in New York State invented a new form of unfreedom: the profit-dri...
Edward Pearson, "The Enslaved and Their Enslavers: Power, Resistance, and Culture in South Carolina, 1670-1825" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)
22 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Enslaved and Their Enslavers: Power, Resistance, and Culture in South Carolina, 1670-1825 (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023), Edward Pearson offers...
Le Lin, "The Fruits of Opportunism: Noncompliance and the Evolution of China's Supplemental Education Industry" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
21 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
An in-depth examination of the regulatory, entrepreneurial, and organizational factors contributing to the expansion and transformation of China’s s...
Oliver Volckart, "The Silver Empire: How Germany Created Its First Common Currency" (Oxford UP, 2024)
21 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The problems that gave rise to the widespread desire to introduce a common currency were myriad. While trade was able to cope with-and even to benefit...
Angela Geck, "The Power to Persuade: Strategic Arguing at the World Trade Organization" (U Toronto Press, 2024)
20 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Power to Persuade: Strategic Arguing at the World Trade Organization (University of Toronto Press, 2024) by Dr. Angela Geck provides an innovativ...
Gregory Makoff, "Default: The Landmark Court Battle over Argentina's $100 Billion Debt Restructuring" (Georgetown UP, 2024)
20 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The dramatic inside story of the most important case in the history of sovereign debt law Unlike individuals or corporations that become insolvent, na...
Susanne Barth, "From Schmelt Camp to 'Little Auschwitz': Blechhammer’s Role in the Holocaust" (Purdue UP, 2024)
19 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From Schmelt Camp to "Little Auschwitz" Blechhammer's Role in the Holocaust (Purdue UP, 2024) is the first in-depth study of the second largest Ausc...
Vanessa S. Oliveira, "Slave Trade and Abolition: Gender, Commerce, and Economic Transition in Luanda" (U Wisconsin Press, 2021)
18 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Well into the early nineteenth century, Luanda, the administrative capital of Portuguese Angola, was one of the most influential ports for the transat...
Zvi Schreiber, "Money, Going Out of Style: The Story of Money and the Mystery of Its Decline" (2021)
15 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is money? Why are trillions of dollars, euros, pounds, and yen being printed, but not spent, and what does this reveal about the state of our soc...
Tehila Sasson, "The Solidarity Economy: Nonprofits and the Making of Neoliberalism after Empire" (Princeton UP, 2024)
14 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
After India gained independence in 1947, Britain reinvented its role in the global economy through nongovernmental aid organisations. Utilising existi...
Ana Raquel Minian, “Undocumented Lives: The Untold Story of Mexican Migration” (Harvard UP, 2018)
13 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1970s, the Mexican government acted to alleviate rural unemployment by supporting the migration of able-bodied men. Millions crossed into the U...
Benjamin C. Waterhouse on "One Day I'll Work for Myself: The Dream and Delusion That Conquered America"
12 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Benjamin Waterhouse, full-as-full-can- be Professor of History at University of North Carolina at Chapel H...
David L. Hoffmann, "The Stalin Era" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
11 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book The Stalinist Era(Cambridge University Press, 2018), David L. Hoffmann focuses on the myriad ways in which Stalinist practices had the...
Eric Hoyt, "Ink-Stained Hollywood: The Triumph of American Cinema’s Trade Press" (U California Press, 2022)
11 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For the first half of the twentieth century, no American industry boasted a more motley and prolific trade press than the movie business—a cutthroat...
Catherine Boone, "Inequality and Political Cleavage in Africa: Regionalism by Design" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
10 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Inequality and Political Cleavage in Africa: Regionalism by Design (Cambridge University Press, 2024) by Dr. Catherine Boone integrates African count...
Claudia Strauss, "What Work Means: Beyond the Puritan Work Ethic" (ILR Press, 2024)
09 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What Work Means: Beyond the Puritan Work Ethic (ILR Press, 2024) goes beyond the stereotypes and captures the diverse ways Americans view work as a p...
Paul Volcker: “The only number that works is zero”
09 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
More than any other global institution, the US Federal Reserve’s decisions and communications drive capital markets and alter financial conditions e...
Alice Mah, "Petrochemical Planet: Multiscalar Battles of Industrial Transformation" (Duke UP, 2023)
08 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Is a green future possible? In Petrochemical Planet: Multiscalar Battles of Industrial Transformation (Duke UP, 2023), Alice Mah, a Professor in U...
Jacob Soll, "Free Market: The History of an Idea" (Basic Books, 2022)
08 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
After two government bailouts of the American economy in less than twenty years, free market thought is due for serious reappraisal. Free Market: The...
Nora Stone, "How Documentaries Went Mainstream: A History, 1960-2022" (Oxford UP, 2023)
08 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How Documentaries Went Mainstream: A History, 1960-2022 (Oxford University Press, 2023) provides a more comprehensive and meaningful periodization of...
Lio Mangubat, "Silk, Silver, Spices, Slaves: Lost Tales from the Philippine Colonial Period, 1565-1946" (Faction Press, 2024)
08 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Baseball’s introduction to the Philippines. The slot machine trade between Manila and Shanghai. A musical based extremely loosely on the life of the...
Arthur Burns: “The smartest guy in the room”
08 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
More than any other global institution, the US Federal Reserve’s decisions and communications drive capital markets and alter financial conditions e...
Andrew Denning, "Automotive Empire: How Cars and Roads Fueled European Colonialism in Africa" (Cornell UP, 2024)
07 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Automotive Empire: How Cars and Roads Fueled European Colonialism in Africa (Cornell University Press, 2024), Dr. Andrew Denning uncovers how roa...
Bill Martin: “Truman looked at him and said: ‘Traitor’”
07 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
More than any other global institution, the US Federal Reserve’s decisions and communications drive capital markets and alter financial conditions e...
Marriner Eccles: Reform “may not have happened in 1935 if Eccles hadn't been there”
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
More than any other global institution, the US Federal Reserve’s decisions and communications drive capital markets and alter financial conditions e...
Katherine Hempstead, "Uncovered: The Story of Insurance in America" (Oxford UP, 2023)
05 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Historically, the insurance industry in America has been fragmented. As a result, there have been debates and conflicts over the proper roles of feder...
Janine P. Holc, "The Weavers of Trautenau: Jewish Female Forced Labor in the Holocaust" (Brandeis UP, 2023)
04 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Beginning in late 1940, over three thousand Jewish girls and young women were forced from their family homes in Sosnowiec, Poland, and its surrounding...
Swati Chattopadhyay, "Small Spaces: Recasting the Architecture of Empire" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
03 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Swati Chattopadhyay's book Small Spaces: Recasting the Architecture of Empire (Bloomsbury, 2023) recasts the history of the British empire by focusi...
Elena Borisova, "Paradoxes of Migration in Tajikistan: Locating the Good Life" (UCL Press, 2024)
02 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Paradoxes of Migration in Tajikistan: Locating the Good Life (UCL Press, 2024) by Dr. Elena Borisova is the first ethnographic monograph on migratio...
Roger Crowley, "Spice: The 16th-Century Contest that Shaped the Modern World" (Yale UP, 2024)
01 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The spice islands: Specks of land in the Indonesian archipelago that were the exclusive home of cloves, commodities once worth their weight in gold. T...
Bernard E. Harcourt. "Cooperation: A Political, Economic, and Social Theory" (Columbia UP, 2023)
31 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Liberal democracy is in crisis around the world, unable to address pressing problems such as climate change. There is, however, another path—coopera...
Richard D. Oram, "Where Men No More May Reap Or Sow: The Little Ice Age: Scotland 1400-1850" (Birlinn, 2024)
30 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Drawing together the evidence of archaeology, palaeoecology, climate history and the historical record, this first environmental history of Scotland e...
Kate McDonald on Asian Mobility History as Labor History
29 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Kate McDonald, Associate Professor of History at University of California, Santa Barbara, about her fascin...
Kristie Flannery, "Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
28 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024) offers a new interpretation of Spanish colonial rule in t...
Kathleen Loock, "Hollywood Remaking: How Film Remakes, Sequels, and Franchises Shape Industry and Culture" (U California Press, 2024)
27 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From the inception of cinema to today’s franchise era, remaking has always been a motor of ongoing film production. Hollywood Remaking: How Film Re...
Mark Baker, "Pivot of China: Spatial Politics and Inequality in Modern Zhengzhou" (Harvard UP, 2024)
24 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
China’s modern history has been marked by deep spatial inequalities between regions, between cities, and between rural and urban areas. Contemporary...
Lisandro Perez, “Sugar, Cigars and Revolution: The Making of Cuban New York” (NYU Press, 2018)
22 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A new book reveals an incredible slice of Cuban-American history that’s been all but forgotten until now. Lisandro Perez‘s Sugar, Cigars and Rev...
Anton Howes, "Arts and Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation" (Princeton UP, 2020)
22 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past 300 years, The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce has tried to improve British life in every way ima...
Lucia Hulsether, "Capitalist Humanitarianism" (Duke UP, 2023)
21 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The struggle against neoliberal order has gained momentum over the last five decades – to the point that economic elites have not only adapted to th...
Matt Stoller, "Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy" (Simon & Schuster, 2020)
20 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy (Simon & Schuster, 2019), Matt Stoller explains how authoritarianism and populism ...
Michael J. Douma, "The Slow Death of Slavery in Dutch New York: A Cultural, Economic, and Demographic History, 1700-1827" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
20 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Original and deeply researched, The Slow Death of Slavery in Dutch New York: A Cultural, Economic, and Demographic History, 1700-1827 (Cambridge Un...
Freeman's Challenge: The Murder That Shook America's Original Prison for Profit
18 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s book is: Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit (U Chicago Press, 2024), by Dr. Robin Bernste...
Kevin Loughran, "Parks for Profit: Selling Nature in the City" (Columbia UP, 2022)
18 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A new kind of city park has emerged in the early twenty-first century. Postindustrial parks transform the derelict remnants of an urban past into dist...
Sarah Milton, "Ageing and New Intimacies: Gender, Sexuality and Temporality in an English Salsa Scene" (Manchester UP, 2024)
17 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The 'baby boom' generation, born between the 1940s and the 1960s, is often credited with pioneering new and creative ways of relating, doing intimacy ...
Mark R. Beissinger, "The Revolutionary City: Urbanization and the Global Transformation of Rebellion" (Princeton UP, 2022)
17 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Examining the changing character of revolution around the world, The Revolutionary City: Urbanization and the Global Transformation of Rebellion (Pr...
James Mallery, "City of Vice: Transience and San Francisco's Urban History, 1848-1917" (U Nebraska Press, 2024)
16 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
San Francisco began its American life as a city largely made up of transient men, arriving from afar to participate in the gold rush and various atte...
Toby Green, "A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution" (U Chicago Press, 2019)
15 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
All too often, the history of early modern Africa is told from the perspective of outsiders. In his book A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Ris...