New Books in Economic and Business History

Apr 13 2025 1241 ep. 57 mins 324
New Books in Economic and Business History Podcast artwork

Interviews with scholars of the economic and business history about their new books

  Arts  History  Science
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Colleen A. Dunlavy, "Small, Medium, Large: How Government Made the U.S.into a Manufacturing Powerhouse" (Polity Press, 2024)

Apr 13 2025 42 mins  
Small, Medium, Large: How Government Made the U.S. into a Manufacturing Powerhouse, published by Polity Books in 2024, offers a bold reinterpretation of American industrial history. Challenging the myth of free-market supremacy, the book reveals how strategic state intervention—from wartime production to Cold War R&D—shaped the rise of U.S. manufacturing. It highlights the role

Ståle Holgersen, "Against the Crisis: Economy and Ecology in a Burning World" (Verso, 2024)

Apr 11 2025 54 mins  
In Against the Crisis: Economy and Ecology in a Burning World (Verso, 2024), Ståle Holgersen develops a conceptualization of 'crisis' that moves beyond simplistic understandings of societal turbulence or even disaster, arguing that crises have come to mean something very specific. Where previous analyses have treated economic and ecological crises as separate phenomena, Holgersen

John Kay, "The Corporation in the 21st Century: Why (Almost) Everything We Are Told about Business Is Wrong" (Yale UP, 2025)

Apr 10 2025 55 mins  
John Kay's The Corporation in the 21st Century: Why (Almost) Everything We Are Told about Business Is Wrong (Yale UP, 2025) is an accessible and entertaining reappraisal of what business is for and how it works. Full of history and written in a compelling narrative style, this book describes a shift in the underlying assumptions of the relationship between capital & labor. Kay des

Andrew Leigh, "How Economics Explains the World: A Short History of Humanity" (Mariner Books, 2024)

Apr 09 2025 14 mins  
How Economics Explains the World: A Short History of Humanity (Mariner Books, 2024) is a book for anyone interested in understanding the economic forces that have shaped our world. Its blend of historical insight and contemporary relevance makes it a valuable addition to your bookshelf. This small book indeed tells a big story. It is the story of capitalism – of how our market sy

Kathleen Thelen, "Attention, Shoppers!: American Retail Capitalism and the Origins of the Amazon Economy" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Apr 08 2025 50 mins  
The United States is widely recognized as the quintessential consumer society, one where huge companies like Walmart and Amazon are famous for enticing customers with cheap goods and speedy delivery. Attention, Shoppers!: American Retail Capitalism and the Origins of the Amazon Economy (Princeton University Press, 2025) traces the origins and evolution of American retail capitalism

Patrick Wallis, "The Market for Skill: Apprenticeship and Economic Growth in Early Modern England" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Apr 05 2025 59 mins  
Apprenticeship dominated training and skill formation in early modern Europe. Years spent learning from a skilled master were a nearly universal experience for young workers in crafts and trade. In England, when apprenticeship reached its peak, as many as a third of all teenage males would serve and learn as apprentices. In The Market for Skill: Apprenticeship and Economic Growth i

Angus Lockyer, "Exhibitionist Japan: The Spectacle of Modern Development" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Apr 04 2025 57 mins  
From the second half of the nineteenth century, Japan has been a particularly enthusiastic user of exhibitions. Large-scale international exhibitions, including Osaka 2025, form only the tip of an iceberg comprising over 1,300 industrial, regional, and local exhibitions held in Japan over the past 150 years. In Exhibitionist Japan: The Spectacle of Modern Development (Cambridge UP

Nathalie Cooke, "Tastes and Traditions: A Journey Through Menu History" (Reaktion, 2025)

Apr 03 2025 59 mins  
Menus are invaluable snapshots of the food consumed at specific moments in time and place. Tastes and Traditions: A Journey through Menu History (Reaktion, 2025) by Nathalie Cooke provides glimpses into the meals enjoyed by royalty and rogues, and by those celebrating special occasions or sampling new culinary sensations. It describes food prepared for the great and the good, meals

Stacie A. Kent, "Coercive Commerce: Global Capital and Imperial Governance at the End of the Qing Empire" (Hong Kong UP, 2024)

Apr 02 2025 57 mins  
In 1842, the Qing Empire signed a watershed commercial treaty with Great Britain, beginning a century-long period in which geopolitical and global economic entanglements intruded on Qing territory and governance. Previously understood as an era of “semi-colonialism,” Stacie A. Kent reframes this century of intervention by shedding light on the generative force of global capital

Tana Li, "A Maritime Vietnam: From Earliest Times to the Nineteenth Century" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

Apr 01 2025 46 mins  
When we think of Vietnamese history, we tend to think of plucky peasant guerillas fighting for their independence against French colonial rule or American imperialism - or even mighty China. In her new book, A Maritime Vietnam: From the Earliest Times to the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge UP, 2024), Li Tana challenges this powerful stereotype by recasting Vietnam as a maritime stat