New Books in Economic and Business History

Jessica Calarco, "Holding It Together: How Women Became America's Safety Net" (Portfolio, 2024)

15 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How do unequal societies function? In Holding It Together: How Women Became America's Safety Net (Portfolio, 2024), Jesscia Calarco, an Associate ...

Sidney Xu Lu, "The Making of Japanese Settler Colonialism" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

14 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Sidney Lu’s The Making of Japanese Settler Colonialism: Malthusianism and Trans-Pacific Migration, 1868-1961 (Cambridge 2019) places the concept o...

Christopher William England, "Land and Liberty: Henry George and the Crafting of Modern Liberalism" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)

14 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Henry George’s Progress and Poverty was one of the best-selling books of the 19th century, and his ideas were taken up by by powerful figures as d...

Sudev Sheth, "Bankrolling Empire: Family Fortunes and Political Transformation in Mughal India" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

13 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Running and securing an empire can get expensive–especially one known for its opulence, like the Mughal Empire, which conquered much of northern Ind...

Chloe Wigston Smith, "Novels, Needleworks, and Empire: Material Entanglements in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World" (Yale UP, 2024)

12 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the eighteenth century, women’s contributions to empire took fewer official forms than those collected in state archives. Their traces were recor...

Adam Berg, "The Olympics that Never Happened: Denver '76 and the Politics of Growth" (U Texas Press, 2023)

12 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

If you don't recall the 1976 Denver Olympic Games, it's because they never happened. The Mile-High City won the right to host the winter games and the...

Stephanie Ternullo, "How the Heartland Went Red: Why Local Forces Matter in an Age of Nationalized Politics" (Princeton UP, 2024)

10 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past several decades, predominantly White, postindustrial cities in America’s agriculture and manufacturing centre have flipped from blue t...

Kathleen Day, "Broken Bargain: Bankers, Bailouts, and the Struggle to Tame Wall Street" (Yale UP, 2019)

10 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Think that today's debates about the role of the Federal Reserve Bank, financial regulation, "too big to fail", etc. are new? Think again. Who should...

Elisa Camiscioli, "Selling French Sex: Prostitution, Trafficking, and Global Migrations" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

09 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Selling French Sex: Prostitution, Trafficking, and Global Migrations (Cambridge UP, 2024) is an illuminating account of the cultural, social, and eco...

Mark Stoll, "Profit: An Environmental History" (Polity Press, 2022)

09 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Profit ― getting more out of something than you put into it ― is the original genius of homo sapiens, who learned how to unleash the energy stored...

Financial Institutions and Enslavement

08 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this special episode, we talk to two authors about the role of financial institutions in enslavement. Sharon Ann Murphy, associate professor of his...

Jonathan H. Ebel, "From Dust They Came: Government Camps and the Religion of Reform in New Deal California" (NYU Press,2023)

07 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From Dust They Came: Government Camps and the Religion of Reform in New Deal California (NYU Press, 2023) tells the story of the federal government...

Miles M. Evers and Eric Grynaviski, "The Price of Empire: American Entrepreneurs and the Origins of America's First Pacific Empire" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

07 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The United States was an upside-down British Empire. It had an agrarian economy, few large investors, and no territorial holdings outside of North Ame...

Thomas Larkin, "The China Firm: American Elites and the Making of British Colonial Society" (Columbia UP, 2024)

07 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What roles did Americans play in the expanding global empires of the nineteenth century? In The China Firm: American Elites and the Making of Britis...

Aaron Eddens, "Seeding Empire: American Philanthrocapital and the Roots of the Green Revolution in Africa" (U California Press, 2024)

06 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Seeding Empire: American Philanthrocapital and the Roots of the Green Revolution in Africa (University of California Press, 2024), Dr. Aaron Edde...

Elena Kochetkova, "The Green Power of Socialism: Wood, Forest, and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology" (MIT Press, 2024)

05 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In The Green Power of Socialism: Wood, Forest, and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology (MIT Press, 2024), Elena Kochetkova examines...

Naosuke Mukoyama, "Fueling Sovereignty: Colonial Oil and the Creation of Unlikely States" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

05 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

European colonialism was often driven by the pursuit of natural resources, and the resulting colonisation and decolonization processes have had a prof...

Kyle Barnett, "Record Cultures: The Transformation of the U.S. Recording Industry" (U Michigan Press, 2020)

02 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Record Cultures: The Transformation of the U.S. Recording Industry (University of Michigan Press, 2020), Kyle Barnett tells the story of the smalle...

Daniel Rachel, "Too Much Too Young, the 2 Tone Records Story: Rude Boys, Racism, and the Soundtrack of a Generation" (Akashic Books, 2024)

01 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Daniel Rachel's new book Too Much Too Young, the 2 Tone Records Story: Rude Boys, Racism, and the Soundtrack of a Generation (Akashic, 2024) present...

Anthony Heath and Yaojun Li, "Social Mobility" (Polity Press, 2024)

31 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What is social mobility? In Social Mobility (Polity Press, 2023), Anthony Heath, an Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Oxford an...

Anne Kim, "Poverty for Profit: How Corporations Get Rich off America’s Poor" (The New Press, 2024)

30 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Poverty is big business in America. The federal government spends about $900 billion a year on programs that directly or disproportionately impact poo...

Stephen J. Silvia, "The UAW's Southern Gamble: Organizing Workers at Foreign-Owned Vehicle Plants" (IRL Press, 2023)

29 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The UAW's Southern Gamble: Organizing Workers at Foreign-Owned Vehicle Plants (IRL Press, 2023) is the first in-depth assessment of the United Auto W...

Tom Mueller, "How to Make a Killing: Blood, Death and Dollars in American Medicine" (Norton, 2023)

29 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dialysis is a medical miracle, a treatment that allows people with kidney failure to live when otherwise they would die. It also provides a captive cu...

The Social Acceptance of Inequality

28 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On this episode of International Horizons, Francesco Duina, Charles A. Dana Professor of Sociology at Bates College and Luca Storti, Associate Profess...

Carola Binder, "Shock Values: Prices and Inflation in American Democracy" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

27 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A sweeping history of the United States’ economy and politics, in Shock Values: Prices and Inflation in American Democracy (U Chicago Press, 2024)...

Iris Moon, "Melancholy Wedgwood" (MIT Press, 2024)

26 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Melancholy Wedgwood (MIT Press, 2024) is an experimental biography of the ceramics entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood that reveals the tenuous relationshi...

American Innovation, American Vitality: A Conversation with Chris Buskirk

22 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How can we restore America's frontier spirit, foster innovation, and stave off decay? Chris Buskirk sits down to discuss his new book America and the...

Rob Drew, "Unspooled: How the Cassette Made Music Shareable" (Duke UP, 2023)

20 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Well into the new millennium, the analog cassette tape continues to claw its way back from obsolescence. New cassette labels emerge from hipster encla...

Daniel P. Ott, "Harvesting History: McCormick's Reaper, Heritage Branding, and Historical Forgery" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)

20 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Cyrus McCormick invented the revolutionary mechanical reaper in 1831...right? At least, that's how the story has been told for decades. In Harvesting...

Priya Satia, "Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution" (Bloomsbury, 2019)

18 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, the industrial revolution transformed Britain from an agricultural and artisanal economy to one domina...

Constantin Ardeleanu, "Steamboat Modernity: Travel, Transport, and Social Transformation on the Lower Danube, 1830–1860" (CEU Press, 2024)

18 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Through a skillful combination of economic and cultural history, this book describes the impact on Moldavia and Wallachia of steam navigation on the D...

Joan E. Cho, "Seeds of Mobilization: The Authoritarian Roots of South Korea's Democracy" (U Michigan Press, 2024)

17 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

South Korea is sometimes held as a dream case of modernization theory, a testament to how economic development leads to democracy. Seeds of Mobilisat...

Adriana Chira, "Patchwork Freedoms: Law, Slavery, and Race beyond Cuba's Plantations" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

17 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In nineteenth-century Santiago de Cuba, the island of Cuba's radical cradle, Afro-descendant peasants forged freedom and devised their own formative p...

Kunal M. Parker, "The Turn to Process: American Legal, Political, and Economic Thought, 1870-1970" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

16 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In The Turn to Process: American Legal, Political, and Economic Thought, 1870-1970 (Cambridge University Press, 2023), Kunal M. Parker explores the...

Elizabeth O’Brien Ingleson, "Made in China: When US-China Interests Converged to Transform Global Trade" (Harvard UP, 2024)

16 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For centuries, the vastness of the Chinese market tempted foreign companies in search of customers. But in the 1970s, when the United States and China...

Rajrishi Singhal, "Slip, Stitch and Stumble: The Untold Story of Financial Reforms in India" (Viking, 2024)

16 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

India’s stock markets are booming. One calculation from Bloomberg puts India as the world’s fourth-largest equity market, overtaking Hong Kong, ...

Raghuram G. Rajan and Rohit Lamba, "Breaking the Mold: India’s Untraveled Path to Prosperity" (Princeton UP, 2024)

15 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The whole world has a stake in India's future, and that future hinges on whether India can develop its economy and deliver for its population--now the...

Liliana Doganova, "Discounting the Future: The Ascendancy of a Political Technology" (Princeton UP, 2024)

14 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Forest fires, droughts, and rising sea levels beg a nagging question: have we lost our capacity to act on the future? Dr. Liliana Doganova’s book D...

Per Högselius and Achim Klüppelberg, "The Soviet Nuclear Archipelago: A Historical Geography of Atomic-Powered Communism" (CEU Press, 2023)

12 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of the CEU Press Podcast, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press/CEU Review of Books) sat down with Per Högselius and Achim Klüppelberg to ...

Görkem Akgöz, "In the Shadow of War and Empire: Industrialisation, Nation-Building, and Working-Class Politics in Turkey" (Brill, 2023)

12 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the Shadow of War and Empire: Industrialisation, Nation-Building, and Working-Class Politics in Turkey (Brill, 2023) offers a site-specific histo...

Denise Von Glahn, "Circle of Winners: How the Guggenheim Foundation Composition Awards Shaped American Music Culture" (U Illinois Press, 2023)

12 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Founded in 1925, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation provides support to what their current website says are "exceptional individuals in pur...

Robert K. D. Colby, "An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South" (Oxford UP, 2024)

10 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Confederate States of America was born in defense of slavery and, after a four-year struggle to become an independent slaveholding republic, died ...

Francesca Trivellato, "The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells Us about the Making of European Commercial Society" (Princeton UP, 2019)

05 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1647, the French author Étienne Cleirac asserted in his book Les us, et coustumes de la mer that the credit instruments known as bills of exchange...

Tanisha M. Fazal, "Military Medicine and the Hidden Costs of War" (Oxford UP, 2024)

05 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Decisions to go to war are often framed in cost-benefit terms, and typically such assessments do not factor in longer term costs. However, recent dram...

Patrick Humphries, "Cleopatra and the Undoing of Hollywood: How One Film Almost Sunk the Studios" (History Press, 2023)

04 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The astonishing behind-the-scenes story of the 1963 film Cleopatra and how it changed the face of Hollywood makes it one of the most fabled films of...

Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac, "The Gender of Capital: How Families Perpetuate Wealth Inequality" (Harvard UP, 2023)

03 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In many countries, property law grants equal rights to men and women. Why, then, do women still accumulate less wealth than men? Combining quantitativ...

Jennifer M. Black, "Branding Trust: Advertising and Trademarks in Nineteenth-Century America" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)

01 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the early nineteenth century, the American commercial marketplace was a chaotic, unregulated environment in which knock-offs and outright frauds th...

Andre Schmid, "North Korea's Mundane Revolution: Socialist Living and the Rise of Kim Il Sung, 1953-1965" (U California Press, 2024)

30 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Histories of North Korea typically focus on one man — Kim Il Sung — and one narrative — his grand rise to absolute power. Andre Schmid’s new ...

George R. Boyer, "The Winding Road to the Welfare State: Economic Insecurity and Social Welfare Policy in Britain" (Princeton UP, 2019)

29 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The creation of the postwar welfare state in Great Britain did not represent the logical progression of governmental policy over a period of generatio...

Sheilagh Ogilvie, "The European Guilds: An Economic Analysis" (Princeton UP, 2019)

29 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guilds were prominent in medieval and early modern Europe, but their economic role has seldom been studied. In The European Guilds: An Economic Analys...

Michael De Groot, "Disruption: The Global Economic Shocks of the 1970s and the End of the Cold War" (Cornell UP, 2024)

28 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Disruption: The Global Economic Shocks of the 1970s and the End of the Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2024), Dr. Michael De Groot argues tha...

Adrian Tinniswood, "Noble Ambitions: The Fall and Rise of the Post-War Country House" (Basic Books, 2021)

28 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

As the sun set slowly on the British Empire in the years after the Second World War, the nation's stately homes were in crisis. Tottering under the we...

John H. Cable, "Southern Enclosure: Settler Colonialism and the Postwar Transformation of Mississippi" (UP of Kansas, 2023)

28 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Historians of the American South have come to consider the mechanization and consolidation of cotton farming—the “Southern enclosure movement”—...

John L. Sullivan, "Podcasting in a Platform Age: From an Amateur to a Professional Medium" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

27 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Podcasting in a Platform Age: From an Amateur to a Professional Medium (Bloomsbury, 2024) explores the transition underway in podcasting by consideri...

Steven C. Beda, "Strong Winds and Widow Makers: Workers, Nature, and Environmental Conflict in Pacific Northwest Timber Country" (U Illinois Press, 2022)

26 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Imagine an environmentalist. Are you picturing a Birkenstock-clad hippie? An office worker who hikes on weekends? A political lobbyist? What about a...

Sudev Sheth, "Bankrolling Empire: Family Fortunes and Political Transformation in Mughal India" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

24 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this colorful book, historian Sudev Sheth traces how a family of diamond dealers deployed wealth to play off political leaders and survive the coll...

Michael J. Graetz, "The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America" (Princeton UP, 2024)

23 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The anti-tax movement is "the most important overlooked social and political movement of the last half century", according to our guest Michael J. Gr...

Jane Hamlett and Julie-Marie Strange, "Pet Revolution: Animals and the Making of Modern British Life" (Reaktion Books, 2023)

23 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Pet Revolution: Animals and the Making of Modern British Life (Reaktion Books, 2023) tracks the British love affair with pets over the last two centu...

Philip Mark Plotch and Jen Nelles, "Mobilizing the Metropolis: How the Port Authority Built New York" (U Michigan Press, 2023)

23 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is everywhere in the New York metropolitan area. Founded in 1921, its portfolio includes airports, marin...

Gary S. Cross, "Free Time: The History of an Elusive Ideal" (NYU Press, 2024)

23 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Free time, one of life’s most precious things, often feels unfulfilling. But why? And how did leisure activities transition from strolling in the pa...

John Tolan, "England's Jews: Finance, Violence, and the Crown in the Thirteenth Century" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)

22 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1290, Jews were expelled from England and subsequently largely expunged from English historical memory. Yet for two centuries they occupied importa...

Guido Alfani, "As Gods Among Men: A History of the Rich in the West" (Princeton UP, 2023)

19 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This provocative and interesting book has received considerable attention. Roaring reviews and interviews include  The Financial Times (UK), The...

Jonathan Chatwin, "The Southern Tour: Deng Xiaoping and the Fight for China's Future" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

18 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 Southern Tour has become a milestone in Chinese economic history. Historians and commentators credit Deng’s visit to Guangzho...

Liz Tregenza, "Wholesale Couture: London and Beyond, 1930-70" (Bloombury, 2023)

17 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Wholesale Couture: London and Beyond, 1930-70 (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Dr. Liz Tregenza seeks to revise the notion that wholesale couturiers were simply...

Steven Ujifusa, "The Last Ships from Hamburg: Business, Rivalry, and the Race to Save Russia's Jews on the Eve of World War I" (HarperCollins, 2023)

15 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over thirty years, from 1890 to 1921, 2.5 million Jews, fleeing discrimination and violence in their homelands of Eastern Europe, arrived in the Unite...

Jeremy Black, "The Atlantic Slave Trade in World History" (Routledge, 2015)

14 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In The Atlantic Slave Trade in World History (Routledge, 2015), Jeremy Black presents a compact yet comprehensive survey of slavery and its impact o...

100 Years of Radio in South Africa: Then and Now

11 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s book is: 100 Years of Radio in South Africa, Volume 1: South African Radio Stations and Broadcasters Then & Now (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)...

Robert M. Jarvis, "Gambling Under the Swastika: Casinos, Horse Racing, Lotteries, and Other Forms of Betting in Nazi Germany" (Carolina Academic Press, 2019)

09 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Although much has been written about the Nazis, one aspect of their rule has been all but overlooked: gambling. While philosophically opposed to gambl...

Sean Vanatta on Credit Cards

08 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with historian and standup comedian, Sean Vanatta, lecturer in economic and social history at the University ...

Gustavo Guzmán, "Attitudes of the Chilean Right toward Jews: From Acceptable Undesirables to Respected Businessmen" (Brill, 2022)

07 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Gustavo Guzmán's Attitudes of the Chilean Right toward Jews: From Acceptable Undesirables to Respected Businessmen (Brill, 2022) is the first book ...

Marc Edelman, "Peasant Politics of the Twenty-First Century: Transnational Social Movements and Agrarian Change" (Cornell UP, 2024)

06 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Peasant Politics of the Twenty-First Century: Transnational Social Movements and Agrarian Change (Cornell University Press, 2024) by Dr. Marc Edelman...

Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, "The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market" (Bloomsbury. 2023)

05 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In their bestselling book Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway revealed the origins of climate change denial. Now, in The Big Myth: ...

Naomi Cahn, et al., "Fair Shake: Women and the Fight to Build a Just Economy" (Simon & Schuster, 2023)

03 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A stirring, comprehensive look at the state of women in the workforce--why women's progress has stalled, how our economy fosters unproductive competit...

Robert Bruno, "What Work Is" (U Illinois Press, 2024)

01 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Robert Bruno is a professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he also serves as Director of the ...

Oliver Wunsch, "A Delicate Matter: Art, Fragility, and Consumption in Eighteenth-Century France" (Penn State UP, 2024)

31 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Eighteenth-century France witnessed an unprecedented proliferation of materially unstable art, from oil paintings that cracked within years of their c...

Jamie Goodall, "Daring Exploits of Pirate Black Sam Bellamy: From Cape Cod to the Caribbean" (History Press, 2023)

28 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1717, the Council of Trade and Plantations received "agreeable news" from New England. "Bellamy with his ship and Company" had perished on the shoa...

Rachel S. Gross, "Shopping All the Way to the Woods: How the Outdoor Industry Sold Nature to America" (Yale UP, 2024)

26 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Rachel S. Gross's Shopping All the Ways to the Woods (Yale University Press, 2024) tells the fascinating history of the profitable paradox of the A...

Marc-William Palen, "Pax Economica: Left-Wing Visions of a Free Trade World" (Princeton UP, 2024)

23 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A new economic history which uncovers the forgotten left-wing, anti-imperial, pacifist origins of economic cosmopolitanism and free trade from the mid...

Jeffrey A. Javed, "Righteous Revolutionaries: Morality, Mobilization, and Violence in the Making of the Chinese State" (U Michigan Press, 2022)

23 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In an era where states and politicians regularly weaponize moral emotions to foment intergroup conflict and violence, understanding the dynamics of vi...

Anelise Hanson Shrout, "Aiding Ireland: The Great Famine and the Rise of Transnational Philanthropy" (NYU Press, 2024)

22 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Famine brought ruin to the Irish countryside in the nineteenth century. In response, people around the world and from myriad social, ethnic, and relig...

Heather Akou, "On the Job: A History of American Work Uniforms" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

21 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Through a variety of archival documents, artefacts, illustrations, and references to primary and secondary literature, On the Job: A History of Ameri...

Max Fraser, "Hillbilly Highway: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class" (Princeton UP, 2023)

20 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, as many as eight million whites left the economically depressed southern countryside and migrated ...

Matthias Doepke and Fabrizio Zilibotti, "Love, Money, and Parenting: How Economics Explains the Way We Raise Our Kids" (Princeton UP, 2019)

20 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Parents everywhere want their children to be happy and do well. Yet how parents seek to achieve this ambition varies enormously. For instance, America...

"Market pressure was growing by the day" with Charles Dallara

19 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Charles Dallara, managing director of the Institute of International Finance from 1993–2013, talks about his crisis memoir: Euroshock: How the Larg...

Nancy Folbre, "The Rise and Decline of Patriarchal Systems: An Intersectional Political Economy" (Verso, 2021)

18 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Nancy Folbre’s The Rise and Decline of Patriarchal Systems: An Intersectional Political Economy (Verso, 2021) asks the questions of why and unde...

Thomas D. Conlan, "Kings in All But Name: The Lost History of Ouchi Rule in Japan, 1350-1569" (Oxford UP, 2024)

17 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the sixteenth century, members of the Ouchi family were kings in all but name in much of Japan. Immensely wealthy, they controlled sea lanes stretc...

Victoria Perry, "A Bittersweet Heritage: Slavery, Architecture and the British Landscape" (Hurst, 2022)

14 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The 2020 toppling of slave-trader Edward Colston's statue by Black Lives Matter protesters in Bristol was a dramatic reminder of Britain's role in tra...

Julie Kalman, "The Kings of Algiers: How Two Jewish Families Shaped the Mediterranean World During the Napoleonic Wars and Beyond" (Princeton UP, 2023)

14 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On July 27th, 1827, the dey of Algiers struck the French consul over his country’s refusal to pay back its debts–specifically, to two Jewish mer...

Mark J. Higgins, "Investing in U.S. Financial History: Understanding the Past to Forecast the Future" (Greenleaf, 2024)

13 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Most people rely only on their life experience to make investment decisions. This causes them to overlook cyclical forces that repeatedly reshape econ...

Brian Merchant, "Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech" (LIttle, Brown, 2023)

10 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

"Luddite" has become an insult and Brain Merchant wants to change that. Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech (Little,...

Sean M. Kelley, "American Slavers: Merchants, Mariners, and the Transatlantic Commerce in Captives, 1644-1865" (Yale UP, 2023)

10 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A total of 305,000 enslaved Africans arrived in the New World aboard American vessels over a span of two hundred years as American merchants and marin...

Alan Bollard, "Economists at War: How a Handful of Economists Helped Win and Lose the World Wars" (Oxford UP, 2020)

06 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Wartime is not just about military success. Economists at War: How a Handful of Economists Helped Win and Lose the World Wars (Oxford UP, 2020) tel...

Alicia Kennedy, "No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating" (Beacon Press, 2023)

06 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A culinary and cultural history of plant-based eating in the United States that delves into the subcultures and politics that have defined alternative...

Joanna Crosby, "Apples and Orchards Since the Eighteenth Century: Material Innovation and Cultural Tradition" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

05 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Showing how the history of the apple goes far beyond the orchard and into the social, cultural and technological developments of Britain and the USA, ...

Kristine M. McCusker, "Just Enough to Put Him Away Decent: Death Care, Life Extension, and the Making of a Healthier South, 1900-1955" (U Illinois Press, 2023)

02 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Kristine M. McCusker's book Just Enough to Put Him Away Decent: Death Care, Life Extension, and the Making of a Healthier South, 1900-1955 (U Illino...

Who owns Khadi?

01 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Why did khadi become so central to India’s freedom struggle? How did it evolve into an international trademark – and what does khadi signify i...

Fynn Holm, "The Gods of the Sea: Whales and Coastal Communities in Northeast Japan, c.1600-2019" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

29 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Japan is often imagined as a nation with a long history of whaling. In The Gods of the Sea: Whales and Coastal Communities in Northeast Japan, c.1600...

Upal Chakrabarti, "Assembling the Local: Political Economy and Agrarian Governance in British India" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2021)

29 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1817, in a region of the eastern coast of British India then known as Cuttack, a group of Paiks, the area's landed militia, began agitating against...

Gerald Epstein, "Busting the Bankers' Club: Finance for the Rest of Us" (U California Press, 2024)

28 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Bankers brought the global economic system to its knees in 2007 and nearly did the same in 2020. Both times, the US government bailed out the banks an...

Alessandro Gerosa, "The Hipster Economy: Taste and Authenticity in Late Modern Capitalism (UCL Press, 2024)

27 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, being authentic has become an aspiration and an imperative. The notion of authenticity shapes the consumption habits of individuals in the most...