Economic history Books

A pathbreaking history of art that uses digital research and economic tools to reveal enduring inequities in the formation of the art historical canon. Painting by Numbers presents a groundbreaking blend of art historical and social scientific methods to...

How deadly germs and pandemics have shaped history - and why they are products of our success as a species.Plagues upon the Earth is a monumental history of humans and their germs. Weaving together a grand narrative of global history with insights from...

An in-depth look at how politics and economics shape the relationship between Congress and the Federal ReserveBorn out of crisis a century ago, the Federal Reserve has become the most powerful macroeconomic policymaker and financial regulator in the...

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, critical attention has shifted from the economy to the most fundamental feature of all market economies-money. Yet despite the centrality of political struggles over money, it remains difficult to articulate its...

A groundbreaking new historical analysis of how global capitalism and advanced democracies mutually support each otherIt is a widespread view that democracy and the advanced nation-state are in crisis, weakened by globalization and undermined by global...

A sweeping cultural and economic history of porcelain, from the eighteenth century to the present Porcelain was invented in medieval China - but its secret recipe was first reproduced in Europe by an alchemist in the employ of the Saxon king...

In less than a decade, the Internet went from being a series of loosely connected networks used by universities and the military to the powerful commercial engine it is today. This book describes how many of the key innovations that made this possible...

The story of the greatest of all philosophical friendships--and how it influenced modern thought David Hume is widely regarded as the most important philosopher ever to write in English, but during his lifetime he was attacked as "the Great Infidel" for...

A powerful new understanding of global currency trends, including the rise of the Chinese yuan At first glance, the modern history of the global economic system seems to support the long-held view that the leading world power's currency--the British...

How silver influenced two hundred years of world history, and why it matters todayThis is the story of silver's transformation from soft money during the nineteenth century to hard asset today, and how manipulations of the white metal by American...

One of the central tenets of mainstream economics is Adam Smith's proposition that, given certain conditions, self-interested behavior by individuals leads them to the social good, almost as if orchestrated by an invisible hand. This deep insight has,...

Lord Byron described Greece as great, fallen, and immortal, a characterization more apt than he knew. Through most of its long history, Greece was poor. But in the classical era, Greece was densely populated and highly urbanized. Many surprisingly...

A fresh look at how three important twentieth-century British thinkers viewed capitalism through a moral rather than material lens What's wrong with capitalism? Answers to that question today focus on material inequality. Led by economists and conducted...

How ancient Mediterranean trade thrived through state institutionsFrom around 700 BCE until the first centuries CE, the Mediterranean enjoyed steady economic growth through trade, reaching a level not to be regained until the early modern era. This...

A monumental history of the nineteenth century, The Transformation of the World offers a panoramic and multifaceted portrait of a world in transition. Jurgen Osterhammel, an eminent scholar who has been called the Braudel of the nineteenth century, moves...

In Illiberal Reformers, Thomas Leonard reexamines the economic progressives whose ideas and reform agenda underwrote the Progressive Era dismantling of laissez-faire and the creation of the regulatory welfare state, which, they believed, would humanize...

How technological advances and colonial fears inspired utopian geoengineering projects during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.From the 1870s to the mid-twentieth century, European explorers, climatologists, colonial officials, and...

As countless love songs, movies, and self-help books attest, men and women have long sought different things. The result? Seemingly inevitable conflict. Yet we belong to the most cooperative species on the planet. Isn't there a way we can use this...

How American colonists laid the foundations of American capitalism with an economy built on creditEven before the United States became a country, laws prioritizing access to credit set colonial America apart from the rest of the world. Credit Nation...

Whether hailed as heroes or cast as threats to social order, entrepreneurs--and their innovations--have had an enormous influence on the growth and prosperity of nations. The Invention of Enterprise gathers together, for the first time, leading economic...

The unique historical relationship between capitalism and the Jews is crucial to understanding modern European and Jewish history. But the subject has been addressed less often by mainstream historians than by anti-Semites or apologists. In this book...

A comprehensive look at international financial crises that puts more recent economic meltdowns into perspectiveThroughout history, rich and poor countries alike have been lending, borrowing, crashing - and recovering - their way through an...

Pack your cutlass and blunderbuss--it's time to go a-pirating! The Invisible Hook takes readers inside the wily world of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century pirates. With swashbuckling irreverence and devilish wit, Peter Leeson uncovers the...

In the century after the Civil War, an economic revolution improved the American standard of living in ways previously unimaginable. Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, motor vehicles, air travel, and television transformed households and workplaces. But...

In the centuries leading up to our own, the volume of traffic across Asian sea routes an area stretching from East Africa and the Middle East to Japan grew dramatically, eventually making them the busiest in the world. The result was a massive...

"[A] magnificent history of money and finance."--New York Times Book Review "Convincingly makes the case that finance is a change-maker of change-makers."--Financial Times In the aftermath of recent financial crises, it's easy to see finance as a...

While the outcomes of the tumultuous uprisings that continue to transfix the Arab world remain uncertain, the root causes of rebellion persist. Drawing upon extensive empirical research, Lineages of Revolt tracks the major shifts in the region's...