New Books in Economic and Business History

New Books in Economic and Business History episodes:

• 06.25.2024

  Emily Zackin and Chloe N. Thurston, "The Political Development of American Debt Relief" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

  A political history of the rise and fall of American debt relief. Americans have a long history with debt. They also have a long history of mobilizing for debt relief. Throughout the nineteenth century, indebted citizens demanded government protection from...

  
• 06.24.2024

  Trish Kahle on the Labor History of Energy Systems

  Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Trish Kahle, Assistant Professor of History at Georgetown University-Qatar, about Kahle's new project, "Power Up: A Social History of American Electricity," which focuses especially on the labor history of both constructing and...

  
• 06.24.2024

  Ann Johnson and Johannes Lenhard, "Cultures of Prediction: How Engineering and Science Evolve with Mathematical Tools" (MIT Press, 2024)

  A probing examination of the dynamic history of predictive methods and values in science and engineering that helps us better understand today's cultures of prediction. The ability to make reliable predictions based on robust and replicable methods is a defining...

  
• 06.23.2024

  Orazio Coco, "Sino-Italian Political and Economic Relations: From the Treaty of Friendship to the Second World War" (Routledge, 2024)

  Sino-Italian Political and Economic Relations: From the Treaty of Friendship to the Second World War (Routledge, 2024) presents a comprehensive narrative and historical analysis of the political and economic relations between China and Italy from the Treaty of Friendship and Commerce signed...

  
• 06.23.2024

  Christopher T. Conner and David R. Dickens, "Electronic Dance Music: From Deviant Subculture to Culture Industry" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)

  Electronic Dance Music: From Deviant Subculture to Culture Industry (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023) explores the subculture’s emergence as a deviant subculture. This text analyzes how industry professionals, fans, and public officials helped usher in a new age of EDM, arguing that while...

  
• 06.22.2024

  Oscar Sanchez-Sibony, "The Soviet Union and the Construction of the Global Market: Energy and the Ascent of Finance in Cold War Europe, 1964–1971" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

  In The Soviet Union and the Construction of the Global Market. Energy and the Ascent of Finance in Cold War Europe, 1964–1971 (Cambridge University Press, 2023), Oscar Sanchez-Sibony reveals the origins of our current era in the dissolution of the institutions that governed...

  
• 06.22.2024

  Allison Elias, "The Rise of Corporate Feminism: Women in the American Office, 1960-1990" (Columbia UP, 2022)

  From the 1960s through the 1990s, the most common job for women in the United States was clerical work. Even as college-educated women obtained greater opportunities for career advancement, occupational segregation by gender remained entrenched. How did feminism in corporate...

  
• 06.19.2024

  Sally Stocksdale, "When Emancipation Came: The End of Enslavement on a Southern Plantation and a Russian Estate" (McFarland, 2022)

  Linked by declarations of emancipation within the same five-year period, two countries shared human rights issues on two distinct continents. In When Emancipation Came: The End of Enslavement on a Southern Plantation and a Russian Estate (McFarland, 2022), readers will find a...

  
• 06.17.2024

  Timothy G. Anderson and Brian Schoen, "Settling Ohio: First Peoples and Beyond" (Ohio UP, 2023)

  Scholars working in archaeology, education, history, geography, and politics tell a nuanced story about the people and dynamics that reshaped this region and determined who would control it. The Ohio Valley possesses some of the most resource-rich terrain in the...

  
• 06.16.2024

  Hannah Forsyth, "Virtue Capitalists: The Rise and Fall of the Professional Class in the Anglophone World, 1870–2008" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

  Virtue Capitalists: The Rise and Fall of the Professional Class in the Anglophone World, 1870–2008 (Cambridge UP, 2023) explores the rise of the professional middle class across the Anglophone world from c. 1870 to 2008. With a focus on British settler...

  
• 06.16.2024

  John Soluri, "Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States" (U Texas Press, 2021)

  Bananas, the most frequently consumed fresh fruit in the United States, have been linked to Miss Chiquita and Carmen Miranda, "banana republics," and Banana Republic clothing stores—everything from exotic kitsch, to Third World dictatorships, to middle-class fashion. But how did...

  
• 06.15.2024

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

  How do unequal societies function? In Holding It Together: How Women Became America's Safety Net (Portfolio, 2024), Jesscia Calarco, an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, examines how America’s DIY society depends on the labour of mothers and excludes the sorts of social supports...

  
• 06.15.2024

  Laurence M. Geary, "The Land War in Ireland: Famine, Philanthropy and Moonlighting" (Cork UP, 2023)

  In this interview, he discusses his new book The Land War in Ireland: Famine, Philanthropy and Moonlighting (Cork UP, 2023), a collection of interconnected essays on different aspects of agrarian agitation in 1870s and 1880s Ireland. The Land War in Ireland addresses perceived...

  
• 06.14.2024

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

  Sidney Lu’s The Making of Japanese Settler Colonialism: Malthusianism and Trans-Pacific Migration, 1868-1961 (Cambridge 2019) places the concept of “Malthusian expansionism” at the center of Japanese settler colonialism around the Pacific. For Japan’s imperial apologists and the discursive architecture they disseminated, alleged...

  
• 06.14.2024

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

  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 diverse as Sun Yat-sen, Leo Tolstoy, and Theodor Herzl. Yet, in the 21st century, George is...

  
• 06.13.2024

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

  Running and securing an empire can get expensive–especially one known for its opulence, like the Mughal Empire, which conquered much of northern India before rapidly declining in the eighteenth century. But how did the Mughals get their money? Often, it...

  
• 06.12.2024

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

  In the eighteenth century, women’s contributions to empire took fewer official forms than those collected in state archives. Their traces were recorded in material ways, through the ink they applied to paper or the artefacts they created with muslin, silk...

  
• 06.12.2024

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

  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 then was forced by Colorado citizens to back away from its successful Olympic bid...

  
• 06.10.2024

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

  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 control banks, who should regulate banks, what should banks even do--these questions have been debated since...

  
• 06.10.2024

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

  Over the past several decades, predominantly White, postindustrial cities in America’s agriculture and manufacturing centre have flipped from blue to red. Cities that were once part of the traditional Democratic New Deal coalition began to vote Republican, providing crucial support...

  
• 06.09.2024

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

  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 in wood, exploit the land, and refashion ecosystems. As civilization developed, we...

  
• 06.09.2024

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

  Selling French Sex: Prostitution, Trafficking, and Global Migrations (Cambridge UP, 2024) is an illuminating account of the cultural, social, and economic history of the sale of 'French sex'. It explores the discourses and experiences surrounding the early twentieth century debate on...

  
• 06.08.2024

  Financial Institutions and Enslavement

  In this special episode, we talk to two authors about the role of financial institutions in enslavement. Sharon Ann Murphy, associate professor of history, argues in Banking on Slavery Financing Southern Expansion in the Antebellum United States (University of Chicago Press, 2023) that...

  
• 06.07.2024

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

  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’s Depression-era effort to redeem Dust Bowl refugees in rural California through the religion of reform. During the Depression...

  
• 06.07.2024

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

  The United States was an upside-down British Empire. It had an agrarian economy, few large investors, and no territorial holdings outside of North America. However, decades before the Spanish-American War, the United States quietly began to establish an empire across...

  
• 06.07.2024

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

  What roles did Americans play in the expanding global empires of the nineteenth century? In The China Firm: American Elites and the Making of British Colonial Society (Columbia University Press, 2024), Thomas M. Larkin examines the Hong Kong–based Augustine Heard & Company, the most...

  
• 06.06.2024

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

  In Seeding Empire: American Philanthrocapital and the Roots of the Green Revolution in Africa (University of California Press, 2024), Dr. Aaron Eddens rewrites an enduring story about the past—and future—of global agriculture. Dr. Eddens connects today's efforts to cultivate a "Green Revolution...

  
• 06.05.2024

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

  In The Green Power of Socialism: Wood, Forest, and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology (MIT Press, 2024), Elena Kochetkova examines the relationship between nature and humans under state socialism by looking at the industrial role of Soviet forests. The book explores evolving...

  
• 06.05.2024

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

  European colonialism was often driven by the pursuit of natural resources, and the resulting colonisation and decolonization processes have had a profound impact on the formation of the majority of sovereign states that exist today. But how exactly have natural...

  
• 06.02.2024

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

  In Record Cultures: The Transformation of the U.S. Recording Industry (University of Michigan Press, 2020), Kyle Barnett tells the story of the smaller U.S. record labels in the 1920s that created the genres later to be known as blues, country,...

  
• 06.01.2024

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

  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) presents the definitive history of 2 Tone Records. In 1979, 2 Tone Records exploded into the consciousness of music lovers...

  
• 05.31.2024

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

  What is social mobility? In Social Mobility (Polity Press, 2023), Anthony Heath, an Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Oxford and Yaojun Li, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester, explore and explain this concept, setting out why the idea matters...

  
• 05.30.2024

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

  Poverty is big business in America. The federal government spends about $900 billion a year on programs that directly or disproportionately impact poor Americans, including antipoverty programs such as the earned income tax credit, Medicaid, and affordable housing vouchers and...

  
• 05.29.2024

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

  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 customer for the dialysis industry, which values the steady revenues that come from critically required...

  
• 05.29.2024

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

  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 Workers' efforts to organize foreign vehicle plants (Daimler-Chrysler, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, and Volkswagen) in the American South since 1989, an...

  
• 05.28.2024

  The Social Acceptance of Inequality

  On this episode of International Horizons, Francesco Duina, Charles A. Dana Professor of Sociology at Bates College and Luca Storti, Associate Professor of Economic Sociology at the University of Turin in Italy and a Research Fellow of the Ralph Bunche...

  
• 05.27.2024

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

  A sweeping history of the United States’ economy and politics, in Shock Values: Prices and Inflation in American Democracy (U Chicago Press, 2024), Carola Binder reveals how the American state has been shaped by a massive, ever-evolving effort to insulate its economy from...

  
• 05.26.2024

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

  Melancholy Wedgwood (MIT Press, 2024) is an experimental biography of the ceramics entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood that reveals the tenuous relationship of eighteenth-century England to late-capitalist modernity. It traces the multiple strands in the life of the ceramic entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795) to...

  
• 05.22.2024

  American Innovation, American Vitality: A Conversation with Chris Buskirk

  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 Art of the Possible: Restoring National Vitality in an Age of Decay. Along the way, he...

  
• 05.20.2024

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

  Well into the new millennium, the analog cassette tape continues to claw its way back from obsolescence. New cassette labels emerge from hipster enclaves while the cassette’s likeness pops up on T-shirts, coffee mugs, belt buckles, and cell phone cases....

  
• 05.20.2024

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

  Cyrus McCormick invented the revolutionary mechanical reaper in 1831...right? At least, that's how the story has been told for decades. In Harvesting History: McCormick's Reaper, Heritage Branding, and Historical Forgery (U Nebraska Press, 2023), National Park Service historian Daniel Ott argues that not...

  
• 05.18.2024

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

  From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, the industrial revolution transformed Britain from an agricultural and artisanal economy to one dominated by industry, ushering in unprecedented growth in technology and trade and putting the country at the center of the...

  
• 05.18.2024

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

  Through a skillful combination of economic and cultural history, this book describes the impact on Moldavia and Wallachia of steam navigation on the Danube. The Danube route integrated the two principalities into a dense network of European roads and waterways....

  
• 05.17.2024

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

  In nineteenth-century Santiago de Cuba, the island of Cuba's radical cradle, Afro-descendant peasants forged freedom and devised their own formative path to emancipation. Drawing on understudied archives, this pathbreaking work, Patchwork Freedoms: Law, Slavery, and Race beyond Cuba's Plantations (Cambridge UP, 2022) unearths...

  
• 05.17.2024

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

  South Korea is sometimes held as a dream case of modernization theory, a testament to how economic development leads to democracy. Seeds of Mobilisation: The Authoritarian Roots of South Korea's Democracy (University of Michigan Press, 2024) by Dr. Joan E. Cho takes...

  
• 05.16.2024

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

  In The Turn to Process: American Legal, Political, and Economic Thought, 1870-1970 (Cambridge University Press, 2023), Kunal M. Parker explores the massive reorientation of American legal, political, and economic thinking between 1870 and 1970. Over this period, American conceptions of law, democracy, and...

  
• 05.16.2024

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

  India’s stock markets are booming. One calculation from Bloomberg puts India as the world’s fourth-largest equity market, overtaking Hong Kong, as domestic and foreign investors pile into the Indian stock exchange. But getting to the point where India’s stock markets—and its financial...

  
• 05.16.2024

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

  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 ended two decades of Cold War isolation, China’s trade relations veered in a very different...

  
• 05.15.2024

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

  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 world's largest--while staying democratic. India's economy has overtaken the United Kingdom's to become the...

  
• 05.14.2024

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

  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 Discounting the Future: The Ascendancy of a Political Technology (Princeton University Press, 2024) sheds new light on...