New Books in Economic and Business History
Episodes
Jennifer Burns on the Life and Lasting Influence of Milton Friedman
14 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jennifer Burns (Hoover Reserch Fellow and Stanford Associate Professor of History) joins the podcast to discuss her career as well as her new biograph...
Kai Jun Chen, "Porcelain for the Emperor: Manufacture and Technocracy in Qing China" (U Washington Press, 2023)
13 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Porcelain for the Emperor: Manufacture and Technology in Qing China (University of Washington Press; 2023) looks at the history of court-sponsored p...
Brendan J. Doherty, "Fundraiser in Chief: Presidents and the Politics of Campaign Cash" (UP of Kansas, 2023)
13 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Political Scientist Brendan Doherty has a new book that dives into the ways that presidents have raised money for themselves, their parties, and other...
Elizabeth Anderson, "Hijacked: How Neoliberalism Turned the Work Ethic against Workers and How Workers Can Take It Back" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
13 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What is the work ethic? Does it justify policies that promote the wealth and power of the One Percent at workers' expense? Or does it advance policies...
Jennifer E. Brooks, "Resident Strangers: Immigrant Laborers in New South Alabama" (LSU Press, 2022)
12 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Immigrant laborers who came to the New South in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries found themselves poised uncomfortably between white ...
Adrien Sebro, "Scratchin' and Survivin': Hustle Economics and the Black Sitcoms of Tandem Productions" (Rutgers UP, 2023)
12 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The 1970s was a golden age for representations of African American life on TV sitcoms: Sanford & Son, Good Times, The Jeffersons. Surprisingly, nea...
Daniel Macfarlane, "Natural Allies: Environment, Energy, and the History of US-Canada Relations" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023)
11 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
No two nations have exchanged natural resources, produced transborder environmental agreements, or cooperatively altered ecosystems on the same scale ...
Aditya Balasubramanian, "Toward a Free Economy: Swatantra and Opposition Politics in Democratic India" (Princeton UP, 2023)
11 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Toward a Free Economy: Swantantra and Opposition Politics in Democratic India (Princeton University Press, 2023), Aditya Balasubramanian charts t...
Huwy-min Lucia Liu, "Governing Death, Making Persons: The New Chinese Way of Death" (Cornell UP, 2023)
10 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Governing Death, Making Persons: The New Chinese Way of Death (Cornell UP, 2023) tells the story of how economic reforms and changes in the manageme...
Xaq Frohlich, "From Label to Table: Regulating Food in America in the Information Age" (U California Press, 2023)
10 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Xaq Frohlich’s From Label to Table: Regulating Food in America in the Information Age (U California Press, 2023) is a biography of the Nutrition ...
Jieh-min Wu, "Rival Partners: How Taiwanese Entrepreneurs and Guangdong Officials Forged the China Development Model" (Harvard UP, 2022)
09 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Taiwan has been depicted as an island facing the incessant threat of forcible unification with the People’s Republic of China. Why, then, has Taiwan...
The Future of Crucial Materials: A Discussion with Ed Conway
09 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium. These fundamental materials have created empires, razed civilizations, and fed our ingenuity and greed for...
Aarathi Prasad, "Silk: A History in Three Metamorphoses" (William Collins, 2023)
09 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Silk—a luxury fabric, a valuable trade good, and a scientific marvel. This material, created by the bombyx mori silkworm, has captivated artisans ...
Writing the History of Money and Monetary Policy
08 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What do the histories of currency and monetary policy tell us about societies at large, political structures, and cultures? Ekaterina Pravilova and ...
Akram Benjamin, "Cotton, Finance and Business Networks in a Globalised World: The Case of Egypt During the First half of the Twentieth Century" (2019)
08 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Firms and entrepreneurs were key drivers of the globalisation of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This thesis investigates commodity...
Vicki Howard, ed., "A Cultural History of Shopping in the Modern Age" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
07 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I talk to Vicki Howard and Sarah Elvins, both contributors to Volume 6 of the anthology A Cultural History of Shopping. Jon Stobart...
Jordan Frith, "Barcode" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
07 Nov 2023
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...
Wm. Matthew Kennedy, "The Imperial Commonwealth: Australia and the Project of Empire, 1867-1914" (Manchester UP, 2023)
06 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Imperial Commonwealth: Australia and the Project of Empire, 1867-1914 (Manchester University Press, 2023) by Dr. Wm. Matthew Kennedy tells the st...
Zeke Faux, "Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall" (Currency, 2023)
04 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 2021 cryptocurrency went mainstream. Giant investment funds were buying it, celebrities like Tom Brady endorsed it, and TV ads hailed it as the fut...
Antitrust Policy, The Chicago School Consumer Welfare Standard and The Rise of the New Brandeisians
04 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Luke Froeb joins the podcast to talk about his career in economics, what it's like to be the chief economist at the FTC and DOJ antitrust division, ho...
Empires, States, Corporations: A Discussion with Historians Philip J. Stern and Quinn Slobodian
03 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Smith wrote that, “Political economy belongs to no nation; it is of no country: it is the science of the rules for the production, the accumula...
Timothy Brook, "The Price of Collapse: The Little Ice Age and the Fall of Ming China" (Princeton UP, 2023)
03 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1644, after close to three centuries of relative stability and prosperity, the Ming dynasty collapsed. Many historians attribute its demise to the ...
Jeff Jarvis, "Magazine" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
31 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For a century, magazines were the authors of culture and taste, of intelligence and policy - until they were overthrown by the voices of the public th...
James V. Fenelon, "Indian, Black and Irish: Indigenous Nations, African Peoples, European Invasions, 1492-1790" (Routledge, 2023)
28 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this interview James Fenelon discusses his new book entitled Indian, Black and Irish: Indigenous Nations, African Peoples, European Invasions, 149...
Adam Bisno, "Big Business and the Crisis of German Democracy: Liberalism and the Grand Hotels of Berlin, 1875-1933" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
28 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Through the colorful world of Berlin’s grand hotels, this book charts a new history of German liberalism and explores the changing relationships amo...
Diana Kamin, "Picture-Work: How Libraries, Museums, and Stock Agencies Launched a New Image Economy" (MIT Press, 2023)
25 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How the image collection, organized and made available for public consumption, came to define a key feature of contemporary visual culture. The origin...
Monetary economics, the Taylor Rule, fiscal policy, and economic growth
20 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
John Taylor, the Mary and Robert Raymond Professor of Economics at Stanford University and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, joins the podcast ...
Milton Friedman, The Chicago School, and The Government’s Incentive To Promote Economic Growth
19 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
David Mitch, an economic historian and professor of economics at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, joins the podcast to discuss the The Chi...
Jeremy Land, "Colonial Ports, Global Trade, and the Roots of the American Revolution (1700-1776)" (Brill, 2023)
18 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jeremy Land's book Colonial Ports, Global Trade, and the Roots of the American Revolution (1700-1776) (Brill, 2023) takes a long-run view of the glo...
Vikram Visana, "Uncivil Liberalism: Labour, Capital and Commercial Society in Dadabhai Naoroji’s Political Thought" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
18 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Uncivil liberalism: Labour, Capital and Commercial Society in Dadabhai Naoroji's Political Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2023) by Dr. Vikram V...
Ian Jones, "Using the Past: Authenticity, Reliability, and the Role of Archives in Barclays PLC's Use of the Past Strategies" (U Liverpool, 2021)
17 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Recent scholarship in organisation studies has begun to address how organisations perceive and use their history. However, how organisations preserve ...
Christopher Phillips, "Civilian Specialists at War: Britain's Transport Experts and the First World War" (U London Press, 2020)
17 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
World War I was the first great general conflict to be fought between highly industrial societies able to manufacture and transport immense quantities...
AI, Post-Truth, and Cultural Transformation
16 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey talks with economists Luciana Lazzaretti and Stefania Oliva of the University of F...
Branko Milanovic, "Visions of Inequality: From the French Revolution to the End of the Cold War" (Harvard UP, 2023)
16 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
"How do you see income distribution in your time, and how and why do you expect it to change?" That is the question Branko Milanovic imagines posing t...
Vilja Hulden, "The Bosses' Union: How Employers Organized to Fight Labor Before the New Deal" (U Illinois Press, 2023)
15 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
At the opening of the twentieth century, labor strife repeatedly racked the nation. Union organization and collective bargaining briefly looked like a...
John D. Garrigus, "A Secret Among the Blacks: Slave Resistance Before the Haitian Revolution" (Harvard UP, 2023)
15 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A bold rethinking of the Haitian Revolution reveals the roots of the only successful slave uprising in the modern world. Unearthing the progenitors of...
Michael Taylor, "The Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery" (Bodley Head, 2021)
15 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1807, Parliament outlawed the slave trade in the British Empire, but for the next quarter of a century, despite heroic and bloody rebellions, more ...
James J. A. Blair, "Salvaging Empire: Sovereignty, Natural Resources, and Environmental Science in the South Atlantic" (Cornell UP, 2023)
13 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Salvaging Empire: Sovereignty, Natural Resources, and Environmental Science in the South Atlantic (Cornell University Press, 2023) by Dr. James J. A....
Lainey Newman and Theda Skocpol, "Rust Belt Union Blues: Why Working-Class Voters Are Turning Away from the Democratic Party" (Columbia UP, 2023)
12 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the heyday of American labor, the influence of local unions extended far beyond the workplace. Unions fostered tight-knit communities, touching nea...
On The History of Occupational Licensing in the U.S.
11 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Morris Kleiner, the AFL-CIO Chair in Labor Policy at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota and arguably the world's lea...
Tariq D. Khan, "The Republic Shall be Kept Clean: How Settler Colonial Violence Shaped Antileft Repression" (U Illinois Press, 2023)
09 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Republic Will Be Kept Clean: How Settler Colonial Violence Shaped Antileft Repression (University of Illinois Press, 2023) by Dr. Tariq D. Khan e...
Rachel O'Dwyer, "Tokens: The Future of Money in the Age of the Platform" (Verso, 2023)
08 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Platform capitalism is coming for the money in your pocket. Wherever you look, money is being re-placed by tokens. Digital platforms are issuing new ...
Arunima Datta, "Waiting on Empire: A History of Indian Travelling Ayahs in Britain" (Oxford UP, 2023)
07 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The expansion of the British Empire facilitated movement across the globe for both the colonizers and the colonized. Waiting on Empire: A History of ...
Daniel Satinsky, "Creating the Post-Soviet Russian Market Economy: Through American Eyes" (Routledge, 2023)
06 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Creating the Post-Soviet Russian Market Economy: Through American Eyes (Routledge, 2023) captures the essence of the period when Russians and America...
Nan Turner, "Clothing Goes to War: Creativity Inspired by Scarcity in World War II" (Intellect Books, 2022)
05 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Clothing Goes to War: Creativity Inspired by Scarcity in World War II (Intellect, 2022) by Nan Turner is the story of clothing use when manufacturing...
Laura Gowing, "Ingenious Trade: Women and Work in Seventeenth-Century London" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
05 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Ingenious Trade: Women and Work in Seventeenth-Century London (Cambridge University Press, 2021) by Dr. Laura Gowing recovers the intricate stories o...
Maxine Berg and Pat Hudson, "Slavery, Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution" (Polity, 2023)
04 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In their remarkable new book Slavery, Capitalism, and the Industrial Revolution (Polity, 2023), Professor Maxine Berg and Professor Pat Hudson “fo...
Taylor Lorenz, "Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet" (Simon & Schuster, 2023)
03 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Acclaimed Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz presents a groundbreaking social history of the internet—revealing how online influence and the c...
Boyd Cothran and Adrian Shubert, "The Edwin Fox: How an Ordinary Sailing Ship Connected the World in the Age of Globalization, 1850-1914" (UNC Press, 2024)
02 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It began as a small, slow, and unadorned sailing vessel—in a word, ordinary. Later, it was a weary workhorse in the age of steam. But the story of t...
Twenty Years After “The New Economy”: A Conversation with Doug Henwood
02 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Economic journalist and broadcaster Doug Henwood revisits his 2003 book, After the New Economy (New Press), with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel....
Isaac McKean Scarborough, "Moscow's Heavy Shadow: The Violent Collapse of the USSR" (Cornell UP, 2023)
01 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Moscow's Heavy Shadow: The Violent Collapse of the USSR (Cornell University Press, 2023) by Dr. Isaac Mckean Scarborough tells the story of the colla...
Jared Davidson, "Blood and Dirt: Prison Labour and the Making of New Zealand" (Bridget Williams Books, 2023)
28 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Picture, for a minute, every artwork of colonial New Zealand you can think of. Now add a chain gang. Hard-labour men guarded by other men with guns. M...
Aditi Surie and Ursula Huws, "Platformization and Informality: Pathways of Change, Alteration, and Transformation" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)
27 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Platformization and Informality: Pathways of Change, Alteration, and Transformation (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023), scholars from Mumbai, Bengaluru, ...
Michelle K. Berry, "Cow Talk: Work, Ecology, and Range Cattle Ranchers in the Postwar Mountain West" (U Oklahoma Press, 2023)
26 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How did ranching become an identity? University of Arizona historian Michelle Berry explains in Cow Talk: Work, Ecology, and Western Ranchers in the...
Jamie L. Jones, "Rendered Obsolete: Energy Culture and the Afterlife of US Whaling" (UNC Press, 2023)
26 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Through the mid-nineteenth century, the US whaling industry helped drive industrialization and urbanization, providing whale oil to lubricate and illu...
Lee Mcguigan, "Selling the American People: Advertising, Optimization, and the Origins of Adtech" (MIT Press, 2023)
26 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How marketers learned to dream of optimization and speak in the idiom of management science well before the widespread use of the Internet. Algorithms...
Tanya Maria Golash-Boza, "Before Gentrification: The Creation of DC's Racial Wealth Gap" (U California Press, 2023)
19 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This book shows how a century of redlining, disinvestment, and the War on Drugs wreaked devastation on Black people and paved the way for gentrificati...
Global Inequality: Are We Really Measuring What We Should Be Measuring?
18 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey interviewed Jayati Ghosh, professor of economics at the University of Massachuset...
Lenora Hanson, "The Romantic Rhetoric of Accumulation" (Stanford UP, 2022)
18 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Lenora Hanson's The Romantic Rhetoric of Accumulation (Stanford UP, 2022) provides an account of the long arc of dispossession from the British Rom...
Oscar Webber, "Negotiating Relief and Freedom: Responses to Disaster in the British Caribbean, 1812-1907" (Manchester UP, 2023)
17 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Negotiating Relief and Freedom: Responses to Disaster in the British Caribbean, 1812-1907 (Manchester University Press, 2023) by Dr. Oscar Webber is ...
Luke Messac, "Your Money Or Your Life: Debt Collection in American Medicine" (Oxford UP, 2023)
17 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A riveting exposé of medical debt collection in America -- and the profound financial and physical costs eroding patient trust in medicine For the cr...
Zachary Parolin, "Poverty in the Pandemic: Policy Lessons from COVID-19" (Russell Sage Foundation, 2023)
15 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Zachary Parolin's book Poverty in the Pandemic: Policy Lessons from COVID-19 (Russell Sage Foundation, 2023) is interested in poverty during the COV...
A Better Way to Buy Books
12 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has alre...
Guillemette Crouzet, "Inventing the Middle East: Britain and the Persian Gulf in the Age of Global Imperialism" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022)
12 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The “Middle East” has long been an indispensable and ubiquitous term in discussing world affairs, yet its history remains curiously underexplored....
Race and Electrical Infrastructure in the Jim Crow South
11 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Conor Harrison, Associate Professor of Geography and the School of Earth, Ocean, and Environment at the University of South Carolina, talks about his ...
Padraic X. Scanlan, "Slave Empire: How Slavery Built Modern Britain" (Robinson, 2021)
11 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The British empire, in sentimental myth, was more free, more just and more fair than its rivals. But this claim that the British empire was 'free' and...
Ines Prodöhl, "Globalizing the Soybean: Fat, Feed, and Sometimes Food, c. 1900–1950" (Routledge, 2023)
11 Sep 2023
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...
Peter Good, "The East India Company in Persia: Trade and Cultural Exchange in the Eighteenth Century" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
10 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1747, the city of Kerman in Persia burned amidst chaos, destruction and death perpetrated by the city's own overlord, Nader Shah. After the violent...
Ryan Tucker Jones, "Red Leviathan: The Secret History of Soviet Whaling" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
09 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Soviet Union killed over six hundred thousand whales in the twentieth century, many of them illegally and secretly. That catch helped bring many w...
Chris Yogerst, "The Warner Brothers" (UP of Kentucky, 2023)
08 Sep 2023
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...
Christian O. Paiz, "The Strikers of Coachella: A Rank-And-File History of the UFW Movement" (UNC Press, 2023)
08 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The past decades have borne witness to the United Farm Workers' (UFW) tenacious hold on the country's imagination. Since 2008, the UFW has lent its ra...
The Ideology of Entrepreneurship: A Conversation with Robert Eberhart
28 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Eberhart, Associate Professor of Management and Faculty Director of International Business at the University of San Diego, talks about his work...
Kalyani Ramnath, "Boats in a Storm: Law, Migration, and Decolonization in South and Southeast Asia, 1942-1962" (Stanford UP, 2023)
27 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For more than a century before World War II, traders, merchants, financiers, and laborers steadily moved between places on the Indian Ocean, trading g...
Jeremy Black, "Why the Industrial Revolution Happened in Britain" (Amberley Publishing, 2023)
26 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Jeremy Black about his new book Why the Industrial Revolution Happened in Britain (Amberley Publishing, 2023). Britain's key impo...
Lucia Carminati. "Seeking Bread and Fortune in Port Said: Labor Migration and the Making of the Suez Canal, 1859-1906" (U California Press, 2023)
24 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Lucia Carminati's book Seeking Bread and Fortune in Port Said: Labor Migration and the Making of the Suez Canal, 1859-1906 (U California Press, 2023...
Outside the Box: The History and Future of Globalization
21 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Economist, historian, and author Marc Levinson talks about his book, Outside the Box: How Globalization Changed from Moving Stuff to Spreading Ideas ...
Ulbe Bosma, "The World of Sugar: How the Sweet Stuff Transformed Our Politics, Health, and Environment Over 2,000 Years" (Harvard UP, 2023)
20 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For most of history, humans did without refined sugar. After all, it serves no necessary purpose in our diets, and extracting it from plants takes har...
Roma Agrawal, "Nuts and Bolts: Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World (in a Big Way)" (Norton, 2023)
19 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Smartphones, skyscrapers, spacecraft. Modern technology seems mind-bogglingly complex. But beneath the surface, it can be beautifully simple. In Nuts...
Diane Purkiss, "English Food: A Social History of England Told Through the Food on Its Tables (William Collins, 2022)
18 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A rich and indulgent history, English Food: A Social History of England Told Through the Food on Its Tables (William Collins, 2022) by Dr. Diane Pur...
Don J. Wyatt, "Slavery in East Asia" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
17 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Don J. Wyatt about his book Slavery in East Asia (Cambridge UP, 2022). In premodern China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, just as in t...
Nicholas Hoover Wilson, "Modernity's Corruption: Empire and Morality in the Making of British India" (Columbia UP, 2023)
17 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When Robert Clive, the man who established Company rule in India was hauled in front of Parliament to answer for crimes of corruption, he allegedly re...
Bobby J. Smith II, "Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement" (UNC Press, 2023)
16 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Bobby J. Smith II's book Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement (UNC Press, 2023 )unearths a food story burie...
Benjamin Y. Fong, "Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge" (Verso, 2023)
15 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Benjamin Y. Fong is author of the new book Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge, which was just released in July,...
The Future Was Here: The Commodore Amiga
14 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Long ago, in 1985, personal computers came in two general categories: the friendly, childish game machine used for fun (exemplified by Atari and Commo...
Yiwen Li, "Networks of Faith and Profit: Monks, Merchants, and Exchanges Between China and Japan, 839-1403 CE" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
13 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In her book, Networks of Faith and Profit: Monks, Merchants, and Exchanges Between China and Japan, 839-1403 CE (Cambridge UP, 2023), associate prof...
Charlotte Karem Albrecht, "Possible Histories: Arab Americans and the Queer Ecology of Peddling" (U California Press, 2023)
11 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Many of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who immigrated to the US beginning in the 1870s worked as peddlers. Men were able to transgress Syrian no...
Chris Wiggins and Matthew L Jones, "How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms" (Norton, 2023)
10 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
From facial recognition―capable of checking people into flights or identifying undocumented residents―to automated decision systems that inform wh...
Vaudine England, "Fortune's Bazaar: The Making of Hong Kong" (Scribner, 2023)
10 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The legacy of the businessmen who built Hong Kong are all over the city. Bankers work in Chater House—named after Paul Chater, the Armenian business...
Elizabeth Humphrys, "How Labour Built Neoliberalism: Australia's Accord, the Labour Movement and the Neoliberal Project" (Haymarket, 2019)
09 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Why do we always assume it was the New Right that was at the centre of constructing neoliberalism? How might corporatism have advanced neoliberalism? ...
Wendy A. Woloson, "Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
09 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Why are our lives filled with so much stuff? In Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America (U Chicago Press, 2023), Wendy Woloson, Professor and C...
Stevan Harrell, "An Ecological History of Modern China" (U Washington Press, 2023)
08 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Is environmental degradation an inevitable result of economic development? Can ecosystems be restored once government officials and the public are com...
Frank Jacob, "Wallerstein 2.0: Thinking and Applying World-Systems Theory in the 21st Century" (Transcript Publishing, 2022)
08 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Immanuel Wallerstein's world-systems theory can help to better understand and describe developments of the 21st century. The contributors of Wallerst...
Steven Press, "Blood and Diamonds: Germany's Imperial Ambitions in Africa" (Harvard UP, 2021)
08 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Since the late 1990s, activists have campaigned to remove "conflict diamonds" from jewelry shops and department stores. But if the problem of conflict...
Richard C. Hoffmann, "The Catch: An Environmental History of Medieval European Fisheries" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
07 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Catch: An Environmental History of Medieval European Fisheries (Cambridge UP, 2023) provides a comprehensive examination of European engagement w...
Philip Roscoe, "How to Build a Stock Exchange: The Past, Present and Future of Finance" (Bristol UP, 2023)
07 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Why does the financial sector matter? In How to Build a Stock Exchange: The Past, Present and Future of Finance (Bristol UP, 2023), Philip Roscoe, ...
Yiannis Kokosalakis, "Building Socialism: The Communist Party and the Making of the Soviet System, 1921–1941" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
06 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
By placing the party grassroots at the centre of its focus, Yiannis Kokosalakis' book Building Socialism: The Communist Party and the Making of the S...
Mike Rothschild, "Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories" (Melville House, 2023)
06 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories (Melville House, 2023), Mike Rothschild delves into the history of the ...
Ryan C. Smith, "The Real Oil Shock: How Oil Transformed Money, Debt, and Finance" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)
06 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The rise of the global financial industry is treated by many economists as a critical component of the rise of neoliberalism. What few address is the ...
Cindy McCulligh, "Sewer of Progress: Corporations, Institutionalized Corruption, and the Struggle for the Santiago River" (MIT Press, 2023)
06 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For almost two decades, the citizens of Western Mexico have called for a cleanup of the Santiago River, a water source so polluted it emanates an over...
Erika Marie Bsumek, "The Foundations of Glen Canyon Dam: Infrastructures of Dispossession on the Colorado Plateau" (U Texas Press, 2023)
06 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River provides electricity for some forty million people, and is one of the largest sources of water in the Ameri...