New Books in Economic and Business History

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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 of public investment, procurement, and policy in scaling firms and fostering innovation. Timely and incisive, this is essential reading for anyone interested in rethinking industrial strategy, reshoring production, or understanding how the state can drive economic transformation in an age of geopolitical and technological change.This book made Martin Wolf's list of Best Summer Books of 2024 in the Financial Times and was noted briefly in a recent Foreign Affairs article on industrial policy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 reveals their profound interconnection within capitalism's contradictions. Central to the book is the idea that both economic and climate crises are crises of capitalism specifically, and the powers that be are not willing to acknowledge it. Holgersen delves into today’s economic and ecological crises to demonstrate that they are not exceptions to an otherwise functioning system but integral to its operation. It is naive to see these upheavals as opportunities for reform or revolution. They are the bedrock of the status quo. Fortunately, the vicious circle sustaining capitalism is not founded on an iron law. Our historical mission in the face of the climate crisis is to create a historical exception to the rule. It is time for ecosocialism against crisis.About the Author: Ståle Holgersen is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Stockholm University, Sweden. He is a member of two research collectives: the Zetkin Collective (ecosocialist group working on political ecologies of the far right) published White Skin, Black Fuel on Verso in 2021 and Fundament (a housing research collective) published Kris i Bostadsfrågan on Daidalos in 2023. This is his first monograph in English.About the Host: Stuti Roy has recently graduated with an MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies from the University of Oxford. She has a BA in Political Science from the University of Toronto. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 describes how and why we have come to "love the product" as we also "hate the producer". Kay discusses areas of particular change such as the relationship between business & finance, the concept of the "hollow" corporation, what we mean when we say "growth", and the motivations and standards of industry leaders. Old ideas of owning the means of production are redundant as workers are increasingly the means of production. Capital is now often a disconnected service contracted from a specialized supplier, and businesses are run by professional managers whose main skill is exerting authority.Author recommended reading: Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard RumeltHosted by Meghan Cochran Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 system developed. It is the story of the discipline of economics, and some of the key figures who formed it. And it is the story of how economic forces have shaped world history. Why didn’t Africa colonize Europe instead of the other way around? What happened when countries erected trade and immigration barriers in the 1930s? Why did the Allies win World War II? Why did inequality in many advanced countries fall during the 1950s and 1960s? How did property rights drive China’s growth surge in the 1980s? How does climate change threaten our future prosperity? You’ll find answers to these questions and more in How Economics Explains the World.Andrew Leigh is an Australian economist, author, and politician currently serving as the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury, as well as the Assistant Minister for Employment. A member of the Australian Labor Party, he has represented the electorate of Fenner in the House of Representatives since 2010. Before entering politics, he was a professor of economics at the Australian National University, specialising in public policy, inequality, and economic reform. Leigh is a prolific writer, having authored several books on economic and social issues, and is known for his commitment to evidence-based policymaking and fostering competition in the Australian economy.“If you read just one book about economics, make it Andrew Leigh's clear, insightful, and remarkable (and short) work.” —Claudia Goldin, recipient of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics and Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard UniversityOne of The Economist's Best Books of the Year Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 from the late nineteenth century to today, uncovering the roots of a bitter equilibrium where large low-cost retailers dominate and vast numbers of low-income families now rely on them to make ends meet.Offering a comparative perspective on the history of American political economy, Dr. Kathleen Thelen shows how large-scale retailers in the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden faced a far less hospitable regulatory environment than companies in the United States, which enjoyed judicial forbearance and often active government support. As American companies grew in scale and scope, they assembled an ever-expanding political coalition that could be weaponized to head off regulatory efforts, leveraging their market strength to squeeze suppliers and workers and even engaging in outright rule breaking when they encountered resistance.Placing the rise of the Amazon economy in a broader comparative-historical context, Attention, Shoppers! reveals how large discount retailers have successfully exploited a uniquely permissive regulatory landscape to create a shopper’s paradise built on cheap labor and mass consumption.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 in Early Modern England (Princeton University Press, 2025), Dr. Patrick Wallis shows how apprenticeship helped reshape the English economy.Some historians see apprenticeship as a key ingredient in the industrial revolution; others agree with Adam Smith in seeing it as wasteful and conservative. Dr. Wallis shows that neither of these perspectives is entirely accurate. He offers a new account of apprenticeship and the market for skill in England, analyzing the records of hundreds of thousands of individual apprentices to tell the story of how apprenticeship worked and how it contributed to the transformation of England. Wallis details the activities of apprentices and masters, the strategies of ambitious parents, the interventions of guilds and the decisions of town officials. He shows how the system of early modern apprenticeship contributed to the growth of cities, the movement of workers from farms to manufacturing and the spread of new technologies and productive knowledge.In this groundbreaking study, Dr. Wallis argues that apprenticeship succeeded precisely because it was a flexible institution which allowed apprentices to change their minds and exit contracts early. Apprenticeship provided a vital channel for training that families could trust and that was accessible to most young people, whatever their background.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s episodes on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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, 2025), Angus Lockyer explores how and why these events have been used as catalysts of development and arenas for fostering modern industry, empire, and nation. He traces their complicated genesis, realization, and reception, demonstrating that although they rarely achieve their stated aims, this does not undermine their utility - Japanese expos have provided a model subsequently adopted around the world. The history of this enthusiasm provides a more nuanced understanding of development in modern Japan, and emphasizes the shared experiences of global modernity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 served during sieges and tablescapes immortalized in art. It explores how menus entertain adults, link food with play for children, reflect changing notions of health and highlight the enduring human need to make meals meaningful. Lavishly illustrated, this book offers an engaging exploration of why menus matter and the stories they tell, appealing to food lovers and general readers, as well as professionals in the food industry.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s episodes on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.Based on extensive research, conducted with British and Chinese government archives, Coercive Commerce (Hong Kong University Press, 2024) shows how commercial treaties and the regulatory regime that grew out of them catalyzed a revised arts of governance in Qing-administered China. Capital, which had long been present in Chinese merchants’ pocketbooks, came to shape and even govern Chinese statecraft during the “treaty era.” This book contends that Qing administrators alternately resisted and adapted to this new reality through taxation systems such as transit passes and the Imperial Maritime Customs Service by reorganizing Chinese territory into a space where global circuits of capital could circulate and reproduce at an ever greater scale.Offering a deep dive into the coercive nature of capitalism and the historically specific ways global capital reproduction took root in Qing China, Coercive Commerce will interest historians of capital and modern China alike.Huiying Chen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Purdue University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices