Shows / New Books in Economic and Business History
New Books in Economic and Business History
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/…
Episodes
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Debra Michals, "She's the Boss: The Rise of Women’s Entrepreneurship since World War II" (Rutgers UP, 2025)
In the years after World War II, as women were being pushed from wartime jobs for returning soldiers, government and business leaders—and women themselves—saw…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Paris Papamichos Chronakis, "The Business of Transition: Jewish and Greek Merchants of Salonica from Ottoman to Greek Rule" (Stanford UP, 2024)
The Business of Transition: Jewish and Greek Merchants of Salonica from Ottoman to Greek Rule (Stanford UP, 2024) examines how the cosmopolitan bourgeoisie of…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Edward Fishman, "Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare" (Portfolio, 2025)
“The acme of skill,” Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, is not “to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles,” but “to subdue the enemy without fighting.”…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Bob Wyss, "Black Gold: The Rise, Reign, and Fall of American Coal" (University of California Press, 2025)
For decades coal has been crucial to America's culture, society, and environment, an essential ingredient in driving out winter's cold, cooking meals, and…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Calvin Schermerhorn, "The Plunder of Black America: How the Racial Wealth Gap Was Made" (Yale UP, 2025)
Dr. J Calvin Schermerhorn is a professor of history in the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. His books…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Karen Robert, "Driving Terror: Labor, Violence, and Justice in Cold War Argentina" (U New Mexico Press, 2025)
Driving Terror: Labor, Violence, and Justice in Cold War Argentina (U New Mexico Press, 2025) by Dr. Karen Robert tells the story of twenty-four Ford…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Victoria Bateman, "Economica: A Global History of Women, Wealth and Power" (Seal Press, 2025)
How many female entrepreneurs, economic revolutionaries, merchants, and industrialists can you name? You would be forgiven for thinking that, until very…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Bradley A. Gorski, "Cultural Capitalism: Literature and the Market After Socialism" (Northern Illinois UP, 2025)
Bradley Gorski, a literary and culture scholar, examines the breakneck commercialization of Russian book publishing and of Russian literature more broadly – in…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Lucy Sante, "Nineteen Reservoirs: On Their Creation and the Promise of Water for New York City (The Experiment, 2022)
From 1907 to 1967, a network of reservoirs and aqueducts was built across more than one million acres in upstate New York, including Greene, Delaware…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Nidhi Mahajan, "Moorings: Voyages of Capital across the Indian Ocean" (U of California Press, 2025)
Moorings: Voyages of Capital across the Indian Ocean (U of California Press, 2025) follows sailors from the Gulf of Kachchh in India as they voyage across the…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl, "Crusading for Globalization: US Multinationals and Their Opponents Since 1945" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)
Crusading for Globalization: US Multinationals and Their Opponents Since 1945 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025) tells the story of an extraordinarily…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
David Welsh, "The Social Railway and Its Workers in Europes Modern Era, 1880-2023: Moments of Fury, Ramparts of Hope" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
The Social Railway and Its Workers in Europe’s Modern Era, 1880-2023: Moments of Fury, Ramparts of Hope (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. David Welsh examines the…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Jumping Through Hoops: Performing Gender in the 19th Century Circus
Jumping Through Hoops: Performing Gender in the 19th Century Circus, by Betsy Golden Kellem, reveals the hidden history of early female circus performers…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
William Kelleher Storey, "The Colonialist: The Vision of Cecil Rhodes" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Cecil John Rhodes became one of the most influential people in the history of the British Empire. He made a fortune in South Africa by leading the world's most…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Dan Roche, "Eyes by Hand: Prosthetics of Art and Healing" (MIT Press, 2025)
Eyes by Hand: Prosthetics of Art and Healing (MIT Press, 2025) is a book about artificial eyes—about the artisans and artists who make them, and about the…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
David J. Lynch, "The World's Worst Bet: How the Globalization Gamble Went Wrong (And What Would Make It Right)" (PublicAffairs, 2025)
The triumphant globalization that began in the 1990s has given way to a world riven by conflict, populism, and economic nationalism. In The World's Worst Bet…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
David McNally, "Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History" (U California Press, 2025)
David McNally's Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History (U California Press, 2025)presents the first systematic Marxist account of the capitalist…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Maren A. Ehlers, "Give and Take: Poverty and the Status Order in Early Modern Japan" (Harvard U Asia Center, 2018)
Maren A. Ehlers’s Give and Take: Poverty and the Status Order in Early Modern Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2018) examines the ways in which ordinary…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Tia Sahrakorpi on a Use-Based History of Electricity in Finland
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Tiia Sahrakorpi, Visiting Professor at Weber State University, about her interesting book project, Our Land: An…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Joshua Specht, "Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America" (Princeton UP, 2019)
Why do Americans eat so much beef? In Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America (Princeton University Press, 2019), the historian…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Daniel Wortel-London, "The Menace of Prosperity: New York City and the Struggle for Economic Development, 1865–1981" (U of Chicago Press, 2025)
Many local policymakers make decisions based on a deep-seated belief: what’s good for the rich is good for cities. Convinced that local finances depend on…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Laura Murphy, "Freedomville: The Story of a 21st-Century Slave Revolt" (Columbia Global Reports, 2021)
A celebrated revolution brought freedom to a group of enslaved people in northern India. Or did it? Millions of people around the world today are enslaved…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Peter Conti-Brown and Sean H. Vanatta, "Private Finance, Public Power: A History of Bank Supervision in America" (Princeton UP, 2025)
What does it mean to supervise a bank? And why does it matter who holds that power? In this episode, Sean H. Vanatta joins us to explore the hidden machinery…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Thane Gustafson, "Perfect Storm: Russia's Failed Economic Opening, the Hurricane of War and Sanctions, and the Uncertain Future" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 brought a tragic close to a thirty-year period of history that began with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Anders M. Greene-Crow, "Austerity Measures: The Poetics of Food Insecurity in Early Modern English Literature" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)
My guest today is Anders M. Greene-Crow. Anders teaches at the Woods College of Advancing Studies and is a former Professor of English at Boston College. More…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Victoria Basualdo et al., "Big Business and Dictatorships in Latin America: A Transnational History of Profits and Repression" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
On this episode of the Economic and Business History channel, I spoke with Dr. Victoria Basualdo and Dr. Marcelo Bucheli about their new edited book. Big…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Gregg Mitman, "Empire of Rubber: Firestone's Scramble for Land and Power in Liberia" (New Press, 2021)
In the early 1920s, Americans owned 80 percent of the world’s automobiles and consumed 75 percent of the world’s rubber. But only one percent of the world’s…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Nicholas Birman Trickett, "Empire of Austerity: Russia and the Breaking of Eurasia" (Hurst, 2025)
Empire of Austerity: Russia and the Breaking of Eurasia (Hurst, 2025) traces how Russian economic policy precipitated the country’s slide towards an…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Angela C. Tozer, "The Debt of a Nation: Land and the Financing of the Canadian Settler State, 1820-73" (U of British Columbia Press, 2025)
You’ve got to speculate to accumulate. We apply that notion to individuals in pursuit of wealth, but what about countries? The Debt of a Nation: Land and the…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Mariya Grinberg, "Trade in War: Economic Cooperation Across Enemy Lines" (Cornell UP, 2025)
Trade between belligerents during wartime should not occur. After all, exchanged goods might help enemies secure the upper hand on the battlefield. Yet as…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Bench Ansfield, "Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City" (Norton, 2025)
“Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning!” That legendary and apocryphal phrase, allegedly uttered by announcers during the 1977 World Series as flames rose…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Shennette Garrett-Scott, "Banking on Freedom: Black Women in U.S. Finance Before the New Deal" (Columbia UP, 2019)
Think running an insurance company or a bank is hard? Try doing it as an African-American woman in the Jim Crow South. Shennette Garrett-Scott's new book…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Steve L. Monroe, "Mirages of Reform: The Politics of Elite Protectionism in the Arab World" (Cornell UP, 2025)
In Mirages of Reform: The Politics of Elite Protectionism in the Arab World (Cornell UP, 2025), Steve L. Monroe argues that geopolitics and social connections…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Alyssa Battistoni, "Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Capitalism is typically treated as a force for relentless commodification. Yet it consistently fails to place value on vital aspects of the nonhuman world…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Mary Bridges on US Bankers Abroad and the Making of a Global Superpower
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Mary Bridges, Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Isabella M. Weber, "How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate" (Routledge, 2021)
China has become deeply integrated into the world economy. Yet, gradual marketization has facilitated the country's rise without leading to its wholesale…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Nicholas P. Roberts, "A Sea of Wealth: The Omani Empire and the Making of an Oceanic Marketplace" (U California Press, 2025)
A Sea of Wealth: The Omani Empire and the Making of an Oceanic Marketplace (U California Press, 2025) is a sweeping retelling of the Omani position in the…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Charly Coleman, "The Spirit of French Capitalism: Economic Theology in the Age of Enlightenment" (Stanford UP, 2021)
Charly Coleman's latest book, The Spirit of French Capitalism: Economic Theology in the Age of Enlightenment (Stanford University Press, 2021) is at once a…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Edward Berenson, "Perfect Communities: Levitt, Levittown, and the Dream of White Suburbia" (Yale UP, 2025)
The rise and fall of William J. Levitt, the man who made the suburban house a mass commodity. Two material artifacts defined the middle-class American…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Every Purchase Matters: How Fair Trade Farmers, Companies, and Consumers are Changing the World
We all have the power to change the world through the products we buy. This simple premise has driven the growth of the conscious consumer movement for…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Kevin P. Donovan, "Money, Value, and the State: Sovereignty and Citizenship in East Africa" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
In his book, Money, Value, and the State: Sovereignty and Citizenship in East Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2024), Kevin Donovan argues that East African…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Ahmad Shokr, "Harvests of Liberation: Cotton, Capitalism, and the End of Empire in Egypt" (Stanford UP, 2025)
Harvests of Liberation offers a critical reinterpretation of Egypt’s path to decolonization through the lens of its most important export crop: cotton. In this…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Megan Brown, "The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community" (Harvard UP, 2022)
In The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community (Harvard University Press, 2022), Dr. Megan Brown details the surprising story of how…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Ronald C. Po, "Shaping the Blue Dragon: Maritime China in the Ming and Qing Dynasties" (Liverpool UP, 2024)
Shaping the Blue Dragon: Maritime China in the Ming and Qing Dynasties (Liverpool UP, 2024) offers a vivid look at China's dynamic and longstanding…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Toby Lincoln, "An Urban History of China" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
In An Urban History of China (Cambridge UP, 2021), Toby Lincoln offers the first history of Chinese cities from their origins to the present. Despite being an…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
David Chaffetz, "Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires" (Norton, 2025)
No animal is so entangled in human history as the horse. The thread starts in prehistory, with a slight, shy animal, hunted for food. Domesticating the horse…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Paul Vigna, "The Almightier: How Money Became God, Greed Became Virtue, and Debt Became Sin" (St. Martin's Press, 2025)
The pursuit of wealth is considered an essential function of human nature, and greed is an unspoken civic virtue. Many of us revere billionaires and Wall…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Gavin Williams, "Format Friction: Perspectives on the Shellac Disc" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
With the rise of the gramophone around 1900, the shellac disc traveled the world and eventually became the dominant sound format in the first half of the…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Jennifer Bess, "Where the Red-Winged Blackbirds Sing: The Akimel O'odham and Cycles of Agricultural Transformation in the Phoenix Basin" (U Colorado Press, 2021)
Where the Red-Winged Blackbirds Sing: The Akimel O'odham and Cycles of Agricultural Transformation in the Phoenix Basin (UP of Colorado, 2021) is not a simple…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Daniel Morales, "Between Here and There: The Political Economy of Transnational Mexican Migration, 1900-1942" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Between Here and There is the first history of the creation of modern US-Mexico migration patterns narrated from multiple geographic and institutional sites…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Thomas M. Kemple, "Marx's Wager: Das Kapital and Classical Sociology" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)
Marx’s Capital looms large today, a century and a half after first publication, a massive tome that attempts to document and map out the dynamics of a society…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Sarah Teasley, "Designing Modern Japan" (Reaktion Books, 2022)
Sarah Teasley's Designing Modern Japan (Reaktion, 2022) unpicks the history of Japanese design from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Christopher Marquis and Kunyuan Qiao, "Mao and Markets: The Communist Roots of Chinese Enterprise" (Yale UP, 2022)
Mao and Markets: The Communist Roots of Chinese Enterprise (Yale University Press, 2022) by Dr. Christopher Marquis & Dr. Kunyuan Qiao presents a thoroughly…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Nadya Bair, "The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Postwar Image Market" (U California Press, 2020)
The legendary Magnum photo agency has long been associated with heroic lone wolf male photographers such as Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson, roaming the…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Agathe Demarais, "Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against U.S. Interests" (Columbia UP, 2022)
Sanctions have become the go-to foreign policy tool for the United States. Coercive economic measures such as trade tariffs, financial penalties, and export…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Agathe Demarais, "Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against U.S. Interests" (Columbia UP, 2022)
Sanctions have become the go-to foreign policy tool for the United States. Coercive economic measures such as trade tariffs, financial penalties, and export…
New Books in Economic and Business HistoryFord to City: Drop Dead
On October 30, 1975, the New York Daily News printed the most famous headline in its history: “Ford to City: Drop Dead.” The previous day, President Gerald…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, "The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want" (Harper, 2025)
Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to put…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Michael John Witgen, "Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America" (UNC Press, 2021)
Against long odds, the Anishinaabeg resisted removal, retaining much of their land in the Old Northwest—what’s now Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Their…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
How ClioVis is Transforming Education and Historical Research
Today I’m speaking with Marcus Golding, historian and Director of Educational Operations at ClioVis. ClioVis is an incredible software and learning tool that…