New Books in Economic and Business History

Vineeta Sinha. "Temple Tracks: Labour, Piety and Railway Construction in Asia" (Berghahn Books, 2023)

20 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The notions of labour, mobility and piety have a complex and intertwined relationship. Using ethnographic methods and a historical perspective, Vineet...

Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, "Basketball Empire: France and the Making of a Global NBA and WNBA" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

19 Dec 2023

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...

Sara Chatfield, "In Her Own Name: The Politics of Women’s Rights Before Suffrage" (Columbia UP, 2023)

18 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We often narrate the history of women’s rights in the United States by focusing on the fight for suffrage. Yet starting as early as 1835, states exp...

Michelle R. Scott, "T.O.B.A. Time: Black Vaudeville and the Theater Owners' Booking Association in Jazz-Age America" (U Illinois Press, 2023)

18 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Black vaudevillians and entertainers joked that T.O.B.A. stood for "tough on black artists." But the Theater Owner's Booking Association (T.O.B.A.) pl...

Randall Hansen, "War, Work, and Want: How the OPEC Oil Crisis Caused Mass Migration and Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2023)

16 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The oil shock of 1973 changed everything. It brought the golden age of American and European economic growth to an end; it destabilized Middle Eastern...

The Future of Global Economic Governance: A Discussion with Jamie Martin

16 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

With increasing talk of de-dollarization and the Gulf attempts to get more influence in the IMF it’s a good time to talk about the world’s interna...

Jean Yen-chun Lin, "A Spark in the Smokestacks: Environmental Organizing in Beijing Middle-Class Communities" (Columbia UP, 2023)

14 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Environmental organising in Beijing emerged in an unlikely place in the 2000s: new gated residential communities. After rapid population growth and ho...

Niall G MacKenzie et al., "Varieties of Capitalism Over Time" (Routledge, 2022)

13 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Varieties of Capitalism Over Time (Routledge, 2022) looks at how varieties of capitalism emerge over time and across different geographies, and is co...

Yan Slobodkin, "The Starving Empire: A History of Famine in France's Colonies" (Cornell UP, 2023)

11 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Starving Empire: A History of Famine in France's Colonies (Cornell University Press, 2023) by Dr. Yan Slobodkin traces the history of famine in t...

Regina Lee Blaszczyk and David Suisman, "Capitalism and the Senses" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)

11 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Regina Lee Blaszczyk and David Suisman's Capitalism and the Senses (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023) is the first edited volume to explore how the forces...

Paul Crosthwaite et al., "Invested: How Three Centuries of Stock Market Advice Reshaped Our Money, Markets, and Minds" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

10 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Who hasn’t wished for a surefire formula for riches and a ticket to the good life? For three centuries, investment advisers of all kinds, legit and ...

Fae Dussart, "In the Service of Empire: Domestic Service and Mastery in Metropole and Colony" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

07 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Despite recent research, the 19th-century history of domestic service in empire and its wider implications is underexplored. In the Service of Empire...

Christopher A. Whatley and Joanna Hambly, "Salt: Scotland's Newest Oldest Industry" (Birlinn, 2023)

05 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Salt is a vital commodity. For many centuries it sustained life for Scots as seasoning for a diet dominated by grains (mainly oats), and for preservat...

Andrew C. McKevitt, "Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America" (UNC Press, 2023)

04 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The United States has more guns than people – a condition that is “unprecedented in world history.” Scholars often focus on gun culture, the Sec...

Monica Huerta, "The Unintended: Photography, Property, and the Aesthetics of Racial Capitalism" (NYU Press, 2023)

04 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The end of the nineteenth century saw massive developments and innovations in photography at a time when the forces of Western modernity—industriali...

Lawrence Zhang, "Power for a Price: The Purchase of Official Appointments in Qing China" (Harvard UP, 2023)

04 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Qing dynasty's office purchase system (juanna) allowed men to legally and openly pay for appointments in the civil service — enabling them to sk...

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

03 Dec 2023

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...

Daniel Herbert, "Maverick Movies: New Line Cinema and the Transformation of American Film" (U California Press, 2023)

02 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Daniel Herbert's book Maverick Movies: New Line Cinema and the Transformation of American Film (U California Press, 2023) tells the improbable stor...

Charles S. Maier, "The Project-State and Its Rivals: A New History of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries" (Harvard UP, 2023)

29 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We thought we knew the story of the twentieth century. For many in the West, after the two world conflicts and the long cold war, the verdict was clea...

Dirk Van Laak, "Lifelines of Our Society: A Global History of Infrastructure" (MIT Press, 2023)

26 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Infrastructure is essential to defining how the public functions, yet there is little public knowledge regarding why and how it became today's stronge...

Sarah E. Stoller, "Inventing the Working Parent: Work, Gender, and Feminism in Neoliberal Britain" (MIT Press, 2023)

24 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sarah E. Stoller, Inventing the Working Parent: Work, Gender, and Feminism in Neoliberal Britain (MIT Press, 2023) is the first historical examinati...

Tabitha Stanmore, "Love Spells and Lost Treasure: Service Magic in England from the Later Middle Ages to the Early Modern Era" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

24 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Magic is ubiquitous across the world and throughout history. Yet if witchcraft is acknowledged as a persistent presence in the medieval and early mode...

Ruth Dalton, "Living in Houses: A Personal History English Domestic Architecture" (Lund Humphries, 2022)

22 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Living in Houses: A Personal History of English Domestic Architecture (Lund Humphries, 2022), Dr. Ruth Dalton presents a rich and rewarding histo...

Jarmo T. Kotilaine, "Sustainable Prosperity in the Arab Gulf: From Miracle to Method" (Routledge, 2023)

22 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Tracing the development journey of the Arabian Gulf region with a forward-looking perspective, Sustainable Prosperity in the Arab Gulf: From Miracle...

Economic Enchantments

22 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Anat Rosenberg, Kristof Smeyers, and Astrid Van den Bossche discuss the fresh historiographies of capitalism offered by studies of enchantment and mag...

Amy Harris, "Being Single in Georgian England: Families, Households, and the Unmarried" (Oxford UP, 2023)

21 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Being Single in Georgian England: Families, Households, and the Unmarried (Oxford University Press, 2023) by Dr. Amy Harris is the first book-length ...

Joe Lane, "Networks, Innovation, and Knowledge: the North Staffordshire Potteries, 1750-1851" (U of London, 2023)

20 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the industrial district of the North Staffordshire Potteries dominated the British earthenware industr...

Thomas Blake Earle, "The Liberty to Take Fish: Atlantic Fisheries and Federal Power in Nineteenth-Century America" (Cornell UP, 2023)

19 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In The Liberty to Take Fish: Atlantic Fisheries and Federal Power in Nineteenth-Century America (Cornell University Press, 2023), Dr. Thomas Blake E...

Matthew F. Jordan, "Danger Sound Klaxon!: The Horn That Changed History" (U Virginia Press, 2023)

18 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Danger Sound Klaxon!:The Horn That Changed History (University of Virginia Press, 2023) reveals the untold story of the Klaxon automobile horn, one o...

Jason Puskar, "The Switch: An Off and On History of Digital Humans" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)

18 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From the telegraph to the touchscreen, how the development of binary switching transformed everyday life and changed the shape of human agency. The Sw...

Plantationocene

17 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of High Theory, Neil Safier talks with us about the Plantationocene, a geological epoch that traces the effects of climate change to t...

Monetary History, Bretton Woods, and Banking Crises

16 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Michael Bordo (Rutgers Economics Professor and Hoover Distinguished Visiting Fellow) joins the podcast to discuss his career, monetary history, the le...

Eve Warburton, "Resource Nationalism in Indonesia: Booms, Big Business, and the State" (Cornell UP, 2023)

15 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Resource Nationalism in Indonesia: Booms, Big Business, and the State (Cornell UP, 2023), Eve Warburton traces nationalist policy trajectories in...

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...