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
Miles Kenney-Lazar, "Socializing Land: Plantations, Dispossession, and Resistance in Laos" (U Hawai’i Press, 2025)
Since 2008, there has been tremendous public interest in the social and ecological ramifications of the global land rush, a rapid increase of capital…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Rosella Cappella Zielinski and Paul Poast, "Wheat at War: Allied Economic Cooperation in the Great War" (Oxford UP, 2025)
The battlefields were not the only places that threatened death during World War I. As conflict raged on and supply lines tightened, the allied powers of…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Claire Provost and Matt Kennard, "Silent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
As European empires crumbled in the 20th century, the power structures that had dominated the world for centuries were up for renegotiation. Yet instead of a…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Jessi Streib, "The Accidental Equalizer: How Luck Determines Pay After College" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
Are jobs fair? In The Accidental Equalizer: How Luck Determines Pay after College (U Chicago Press, 2023), Jessi Streib, an associate Professor of Sociology at…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Trish FitzSimons and Madelyn Shaw, "Fleeced: Unraveling the History of Wool and War" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Not everything about wool is warm and fuzzy. Wool, for millennia the cold climate textile fiber, has a long relationship to war, both in terms of supporting it…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Alice Wiemers, "Village Work: Development and Rural Statecraft in Twentieth-Century Ghana" (Ohio UP, 2021)
Most development histories focus on large-scale projects and multi-year plans. But how would we understand development differently if we chose a different…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Elliot Dolan-Evans, "Making War Safe for Capitalism: The World Bank, IMF, and the Conflict in Ukraine" (Bristol UP, 2025)
Making War Safe for Capitalism: The World Bank, IMF, and the Conflict in Ukraine (Bristol UP, 2025) by Dr. Elliot Dolan-Evans examines the impact of World Bank…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Margaret S. Graves, "Invisible Hands: Fabrication, Forgery, and the Art of Islamic Ceramics" (Princeton UP, 2026)
In the heyday of Islamic art collecting around the turn of the twentieth century, thousands of premodern ceramic objects circulated on the international…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Ilana Gershon, "The Pandemic Workplace: How We Learned to Be Citizens in the Office" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
A provocative book arguing that the workplace is where we learn to live democratically. In The Pandemic Workplace: How We Learned to Be Citizens in the Office…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Paolo Zannoni, "Money and Promises: Seven Deals That Changed the World" (Columbia Business School, 2024)
In Money and Promises: Seven Deals That Changed the World, the distinguished banker, executive, and historian Paolo Zannoni examines the complex…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Michelle Jackson, "The Division of Rationalized Labor" (Harvard UP, 2025)
How have jobs changed in the last 150 years? In The Division of Rationalized Labor (Harvard UP, 2025) Michelle Jackson, an Associate Professor in the…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Raiford Guins, "King PONG: How Atari Bounced Across Markets to Make Millions" (MIT Press, 2026)
PONG is one of the longest- and most consistently circulating video games. Released in 1972, it remains at our fingertips as Android or iOS app, hosted at…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Denys Gorbach, "The Making and Unmaking of the Ukrainian Working Class: Everyday Politics and Moral Economy in a Post-Soviet City" (Berghahn Books, 2024)
Industrial workers in Ukraine have a complex political lifeworld because their political action aimed at bringing radical social change coexists with a…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
W. Patrick McCray, "README: A Bookish History of Computing from Electronic Brains to Everything Machines" (MIT Press, 2025)
In README: A Bookish History of Computing from Electronic Brains to Everything Machines (MIT Press, 2025), historian Dr. Patrick McCray argues that in order…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Donald Chew, "The Making of Modern Corporate Finance: A History of the Ideas and How They Help Build the Wealth of Nations" (Columbia Business School Publishing, 2025)
In The Making of Modern Corporate Finance: A History of the Ideas and How They Help Build the Wealth of Nations (Columbia Business School Publishing, 2025)…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
David Obst, "Saving Ourselves from Big Car" (Columbia Business School Publishing, 2025)
Streetwise: Saving Ourselves from Big Car (Columbia Business School Publishing, 2025) exposes how “Big Car”―the complex of companies in the automobile, oil…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Sara Pennell & Jon Stobart, "Auctions and the Consumption of Second-Hand Goods in Georgian England" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
Auctions and the Consumption of Second-Hand Goods in Georgian England (Bloomsbury, 2026) by Dr. Sara Pennell & Professor Jon Stobart provides the first…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Bridget Salmon and Andrew Godley, "The Making of the Modern Supermarket: Self-Service Adoption in British Food Retailing, 1950-1975" (Oxford UP, 2025)
What seems mundane today—walking into a supermarket, picking up goods, and paying at a checkout—was once a radical experiment. In our latest New Books Network…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Javiera Barandiaran, "Living Minerals: Nature, Trade, and Power in the Race for Lithium" (MIT Press, 2026)
A sobering investigation of the rush for lithium for electric vehicles, the problematic history of lithium mining, and the consequences for sustainability…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Peter S. Goodman, "Davos Man: How the Billionaire Class Devoured Democracy" (Custom House, 2022)
Drawing on decades of experience covering the global economy, New York Times' journalist Peter S. Goodman profiles five representative Davos Men-members of the…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Luca Cottini, "The Rise of Americanism in Italy, 1888-1919" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries marked a pivotal time for the United States as the nation emerged as a political and industrial powerhouse…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Stevan Harrell, "An Ecological History of Modern China" (U Washington Press, 2023)
Is environmental degradation an inevitable result of economic development? Can ecosystems be restored once government officials and the public are committed to…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Blair Kelley, "Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class" (LIveright, 2023)
In the United States, the stoicism and importance of the “working class” is part of the national myth. The term is often used to conjure the contributions and…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Mark Harrison, "Secret Leviathan: Secrecy and State Capacity under Soviet Communism" (Stanford UP, 2023)
The Soviet Union was one of the most secretive states that ever existed. Defended by a complex apparatus of rules and checks administered by the secret police…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Nathan Munier, "Zimbabwe's Diamond Trade: The State, Resource Politics and Development" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
What happens when states experience a rapid increase in resource wealth? This book examines the significant diamond find in eastern Zimbabwe in 2006, possibly…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Robert Yee, "The City's Defense: The Bank of England and the Remaking of Economic Governance, 1914-1939" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
In The City's Defense: The Bank of England and the Remaking of Economic Governance, 1914-1939, Robert Yee examines how the City of London maintained its…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Bram de Maeyer, "Building for Belgium: Belgian Embassies in a Globalising World (1945-2020)" (Leuven UP, 2025)
Embassy buildings are the most tangible evidence of a state’s diplomatic presence abroad. State authorities have invested in the architectural conception of…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Misty L. Heggeness, "Swiftynomics: How Women Mastermind and Redefine Our Economy" (U California Press, 2026)
A feminist romp through pop culture that illuminates how women influence and shape the economy. Taylor Swift isn't just a pop megastar. She is a working woman…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Toby Green, "The Heretic of Cacheu: Crispina Peres and the Struggle over Life in Seventeenth-Century West Africa" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
The Heretic of Cacheu: Crispina Peres and the Struggle over Life in Seventeenth-Century West Africa (U Chicago Press, 2025) by Professor Toby Green tells the…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Matteo Gatti, "Corporate Power and the Politics of Change" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
In Corporate Power and the Politics of Change (Cambridge UP, 2025), Matteo Gatti examines how corporations have taken on roles traditionally reserved for…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Nena Vandeweerdt, "Women and Work Through a Comparative Lens: Gender and the Urban Labor Markets of Premodern Brabant and Biscay" (Leuven UP, 2025)
Women and Work Through a Comparative Lens: Gender and the Urban Labor Markets of Premodern Brabant and Biscay explores women's economic roles in late medieval…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, "Basketball Empire: France and the Making of a Global NBA and WNBA" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Today we are joined by Dr. Lindsay Krasnoff, who is an historian, specializing in global sport, communications and diplomacy. She is also the Director of…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Colin Mayer, "Capitalism and Crises: How to Fix Them" (Oxford UP, 2024)
The world is encountering multiple crises - climate, droughts, floods, energy, food, and pandemics, to name a few. Capitalism and Crises: How to Fix Them…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Emilie Connolly, "Vested Interests: Trusteeship and Native Dispossession in the United States" (Princeton UP, 2025)
From the earliest days of its founding, the United States set its sights on Native territory. Amid better-known “Indian wars,” the federal government quietly…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado, "Taco" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Taco (Bloomsbury, 2025) is a deep dive into the most iconic Mexican food from the perspective of a Mexico City native. In a narrative that moves from Mexico to…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Malcolm Harris, "Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World" (Little, Brown, 2023)
Palo Alto is nice. The weather is temperate, the people are educated, rich, healthy, enterprising. Remnants of a hippie counterculture have synthesized with…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Ines Prodöhl, "Globalizing the Soybean: Fat, Feed, and Sometimes Food, c. 1900–1950" (Routledge, 2023)
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 soybean became a…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
John M. Findlay, "The Mobilized American West, 1940-2000" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)
At the end of the 1930s, the West was in peril. A cultural and economic backwater, the Great Depression had all-but wiped out the extractive industries which…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Aija Leiponen, "Digital Innovation Strategy" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Based on applied economics and from the perspective of an innovator seeking to develop a new digital business, Digital Innovation Strategy (Cambridge UP…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Eve Warburton, "Resource Nationalism in Indonesia: Booms, Big Business, and the State" (Cornell UP, 2023)
In Resource Nationalism in Indonesia: Booms, Big Business, and the State (Cornell UP, 2023), Eve Warburton traces nationalist policy trajectories in Indonesia…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Harold James, "Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization" (Yale UP, 2023)
In Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization (Yale UP, 2023), distinguished economic historian Harold James offers a fresh perspective on…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Marcy Norton, "The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals after 1492" (Harvard UP, 2024)
In The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals after 1492 (Harvard University Press, 2024), Dr. Marcy Norton offers a dramatic new interpretation of the…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Kendra D. Boyd, "Freedom Enterprise: Black Entrepreneurship and Racial Capitalism in Detroit" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)
The Great Migration saw more than six million African Americans leave the US South between 1910 and 1970. Though the experiences of migrant laborers are…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Peter Frankopan, "The Earth Transformed: An Untold History" (Knopf, 2023)
The Earth Transformed. An Untold History (Knopf, 2023) is a captivating and informative book that reveals how climate change has been a driving force behind…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
David Morris, "Stealing The Future: Sam Bankman-Fried, Elite Fraud, and the Cult of Techno-Utopia" (Watkins Media, 2025)
Stealing the Future is the first book to tell the true and full story of Sam Bankman-Fried and his historic crimes. It chronicles the $11 billion FTX fraud…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Philip J. Stern, "Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations That Built British Colonialism" (Harvard UP, 2023)
Philip Stern places the corporation―more than the Crown―at the heart of British colonialism, arguing that companies built and governed global empire, raising…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Henry Grabar, "Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World" (Penguin, 2023)
Parking, quite literally, has a death grip on America: each year a handful of Americans are tragically killed by their fellow citizens over parking spots. But…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Anna Zeide, "US History in 15 Foods" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
From whiskey in the American Revolution to Spam in WWII, food reveals a great deal about the society in which it exists. Selecting 15 foods that represent key…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Jordan Frith, "Barcode" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
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 to how…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Sara Byala, "Bottled: How Coca-Cola Became African" (Oxford UP, 2023)
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 became…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Kathryn Cornell Dolan, "Breakfast Cereal: A Global History" (Reaktion Books, 2023)
Breakfast Cereal: A Global History (Reaktion, 2023) by Dr. Kathryn Dolan presents the long, distinguished and surprising history of breakfast cereal. Simple…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Sven Beckert, "Capitalism: A Global History" (Allen Lane, 2025)
No other phenomenon has shaped human history as decisively as capitalism. It structures how we live and work, how we think about ourselves and others, how we…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Simon Avenell, "A History of Postwar Japan: Recovery, Prosperity, and Transformation" (U Hawaii Press, 2025)
This sweeping history tells the story of contemporary Japan from its defeat in the Asia-Pacific War in 1945 until the early decades of the new millennium. How…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Matthew Scobie and Anna Sturman, "The Economic Possibilities of Decolonisation" (Bridget Williams Books, 2024)
What do the economics of decolonisation mean for the future of Aotearoa? This question drives the work of Dr. Matthew Scobie and Dr. Anna Sturman as they…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Molly-Claire Gillett, "Irish Lacemaking: Art, Industry and Cultural Practice" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Following the career of the Irish lace designer and inspector Emily Anderson (1856-1948), Irish Lacemaking: Art, Industry and Cultural Practice (Bloomsbury…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Celina Su, "Budget Justice: On Building Grassroots Politics and Solidarities" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Amid political repression and a deepening affordability crisis, Budget Justice: On Building Grassroots Politics and Solidarities (Princeton UP, 2025)…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Maddalena Alvi, "The European Art Market and the First World War: Art, Capital, and the Decline of the Collecting Class, 1910–1925" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
The outbreak of the First World War shattered the established European art market. Amidst fighting, looting, confiscations, expropriation fears and political…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Megan Tobias Neely, "Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street" (U California Press, 2022)
In Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street (U California Press, 2022) Megan Tobias Neely, a former hedge fund worker takes an ethnographic…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Mike Bird, "The Land Trap: A New History of the World's Oldest Asset" (Penguin, 2025)
In The Land Trap (Portfolio / Penguin), Mike Bird—Wall Street editor at The Economist—reveals how this ancient asset still exerts outsize influence over the…
- New Books in Economic and Business History
Kathryn Chelminski, "Governing Energy Transitions: A Study of Regime Complex Effectiveness on Geothermal Development in Indonesia and the Philippines" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
As the world moves with increasing urgency to mitigate climate change and catalyze energy transitions to net zero, understanding the governance mechanisms that…