New Books in Economic and Business History

How debt and speculation financed the suburban American dream and led to today’s inequalities In the popular imagination, the suburbs are synonymous with the “American Dream” of upward mobility and economic security. After World War II, white families rushed into newly built suburbs, where they accumulated wealth through homeownership and enjoyed access to superior public schools. In this revelatory new account of postwar suburbanization, historian Michael R. Glass exposes the myth of uniform suburban prosperity. Focusing on the archetypal suburbs of Long Island, Cracked Foundations: Debt and Inequality in Suburban America (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) uncovers a hidden landscape of debt and speculation. Glass shows how suburbanites were not guaranteed decent housing and high-quality education but instead had to obtain these necessities in the marketplace using home mortgages and municipal bonds. These debt instruments created financial strains for families, distributed resources unevenly across suburbs, and codified racial segregation. Most important, debt transformed housing and education into commodities, turning homes and schools into engines of capital accumulation. The resulting pressures made life increasingly precarious, even for those privileged suburbanites who resided in all-white communities. For people of color denied the same privileges, suburbs became places where predatory loans extracted wealth and credit rating agencies punished children in the poorest school districts. Long Islanders challenged these inequalities over several decades, demanding affordable housing, school desegregation, tax equity, and school-funding equalization. Yet the unequal circumstances created by the mortgages and bonds remain very much in place, even today. Cracked Foundations not only transforms our understanding of housing, education, and inequality but also highlights how contemporary issues like the affordable housing crisis and school segregation have their origins in the postwar golden age of capitalism. Guest: Michael Glass (he/him) is a political and urban historian of the twentieth-century United States, with research and teaching interests in racism, capitalism, and inequality. Michael is an Assistant Professor of History at Boston College. Host: Jenna Pittman (she/her), a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Duke University. She studies modern European history, political economy, and Germany from 1945-1990. Scholars@Duke: here Linktree: here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In The Money Revolution: How to Finance the Next American Century, economist and bestselling author Richard Duncan lays out a farsighted strategy to maximize the United States' unmatched financial and technological potential. In compelling fashion, the author shows that the United States can and should invest in the industries and technologies of the future on an unprecedented scale in order to ignite a new technological revolution that would cement the country’s geopolitical preeminence, greatly enhance human wellbeing, and create unimaginable wealth. This book also features a history of the Federal Reserve.Richard Duncan has served as Global Head of Investment Strategy at ABN AMRO Asset Management in London, worked as a financial sector specialist for the World Bank in Washington, D.C., and headed equity research departments for James Capel Securities and Salomon Brothers in Bangkok, Thailand. He is now the publisher of Macro Watch, a video-newsletter that analyzes the forces driving the global economy in the 21st Century.Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The abortion market was a powerful economic force in American life. Before legalization lowered the cost, one million women each year collectively paid upward of $750 million for abortions. In The Abortion Market: Buying and Selling Access in the Era Before Roe (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025), Dr. Katherine Parkin reveals the strength of a massive consumer market that involved loans, advertising, and travel, as well as the costs associated with the procedure itself. Laying the foundation for the emergence of a public market that facilitated the buying and selling of abortions, wealthy population control ideologues encouraged positive public discourse on abortion, funded medical studies, and waged legal battles. White, middle- and upper-class women sought out abortions and paid exorbitantly for them. Male entrepreneurs emerged to capitalize on the booming market and profit from the incredible demand. Advertising on billboards and in college newspapers, men profited by providing the phone number, getting kickbacks for delivering patients, and arranging for women’s travel to Mexico, Puerto Rico, England, and Japan. Students demanded abortion access and organized when it came at a steep cost, especially to the poorest among them. Abortion providers in Kansas, California, and Washington, D.C. attracted out-of-state consumers, with some women aided by their universities or by medical insurance. Between 1970 and 1973, entrepreneurs, providers, and hundreds of thousands of women seeking to buy abortions headed to New York City, heralded by some as the “abortion capital of the world.” While we may have imagined that securing an abortion was best understood as a hidden, woman-only experience, The Abortion Market reveals the extent to which businesses and businessmen openly selling abortion access shaped the experience of buying abortions for millions of women. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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 interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This open access book is about Mozambicans and Angolans who migrated in state-sponsored schemes to East Germany in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. They went to work and to be trained as a vanguard labor force for the intended African industrial revolutions. While they were there, they contributed their labor power to the East German economy. This book draws on more than 260 life history interviews and uncovers complex and contradictory experiences and transnational encounters. What emerges is a series of dualities that exist side by side in the memories of the former migrants: the state and the individual, work and consumption, integration and exclusion, loss and gain, and the past in the past and the past in the present and future. By uncovering these dualities, the book explores the lives of African migrants moving between the Third and Second worlds. Devoted to the memories of worker-trainees, this transnational study comes at a time when historians are uncovering the many varied, complicated, and important connections within the global socialist world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Architecture of the Wire explores the development of telecommunications infrastructure and its impact on the architectural and urban culture of the modern age—from poles, wires, and cables, to “micro-architectures,” such as the théâtrophone and the telephone booth. Starting with the intrepid worldwide infrastructures of the late nineteenth century, Carlotta Darò proposes a new history that explores the multiple links and crossroads of such technical “things” with architecture and art.Based on extensive research of North American company archives, and French institutional ones, and drawing on secondary literature in art and architectural history, media studies, and the history of technology, Darò examines the aesthetic implications of material objects that have forever changed our urban, rural, and domestic environments. This interview was conducted by Matthew Wells, Senior Lecturer in Architectural Studies at the University of Manchester. His research explores architecture in the long nineteenth century, focusing on artistic techniques, technology, and political economy. Wells is the author of Modelling the Metropolis: The Architectural Model in Victorian London (2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press) sat down with Emília Barna to discuss her new book, Working in Music on the Semiperiphery: Local Cultural Production and Global Capitalism (CEU Press, 2025). We talked about the changes and continuities that the Hungarian music industry underwent from the communist to the post-communist era, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Barna’s research, and the gendered aspects of the music industry. Working in Music on the Semiperiphery is available in Open Access, through CEU Press’ Opening the Future initiative. You can download the book free here. You can find out more about Opening the Future here. You can purchase a physical copy here. The CEU Press Podcast delves into various aspects of the publishing process: from crafting a book proposal, finding a publisher, responding to peer review feedback on the manuscript, to the subsequent distribution, promotion and marketing of academic books. We also talk to series editors and authors, who will share their experiences of getting published and discuss their series or books. Stay tuned for future episodes and subscribe to our podcast to be the first to be notified. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vanilla is one of the most expensive of flavorings—so valuable that it was smuggled or stolen by pirates in the early days—and yet it is everywhere. It is a key ingredient in dishes ranging from crème brûlée to Japanese purin. It is the quintessential ice cream flavor in the United States. In Vanilla: The History of an Extraordinary Bean (Yale UP, 2025) Dr. Eric T. Jennings explains how the world’s only edible orchid, originally endemic to Central America, became embedded in the international culinary and cultural landscape. In tracing vanilla’s rise, Dr. Jennings describes how in the 1840s an enslaved boy named Edmond Albius discovered a way to pollinate vanilla orchids with a toothpick or needle—an ingenious process that is still in use. This method transformed the vanilla sector by enabling the plant to be grown outside of its natural range. Dr. Jennings also looks at how the vanilla craze led to the search for now‑pervasive substitutes, and how a vanilla lobby has fought back. He further unravels how vanilla—the world’s most expensive crop and once considered its most refined fragrance—came to mean “bland.” This tale of botany, production techniques, consumption habits, and colonial rivalry connects the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans, revealing how vanilla has become a potent symbol of the modern global village. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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 interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since the Reagan era, conservatives in the United States have championed cutting taxes, especially for wealthy individuals and corporations, as the best way to achieve economic prosperity. In his new book, Pay Up!: Conservative Myths about Tax Cuts for the Rich (Cambridge UP, 2025) John L. Campbell shows that while these claims are highly influential, they are also wrong. Using historical and cross-national evidence, the book challenges and refutes every justification conservatives have made for tax cuts - that American taxes are too high; they hurt the economy; they facilitate government waste; they constitute an unfair downward redistribution of income; and they threaten individual freedom - and conversely shows that countries can actually benefit from higher taxes, especially when tax increases fall most heavily on those most able to pay them. Through clear prose and a well-reasoned argument, Campbell's book provides an accessible, engaging, and much-needed perspective on the role of taxes in American society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the bustling ports of Lisbon to the coastal inlets of the Bight of Benin to the vibrant waterways of Bahia, Black mariners were integral to every space of the commercial South Atlantic. Navigating this kaleidoscopic world required a remarkable cosmopolitanism--the chameleonlike ability to adapt to new surroundings by developing sophisticated medicinal, linguistic, and navigational knowledge. In Captive Cosmopolitans: Black Mariners and the World of South Atlantic Slavery (Omohundro Institute and UNC Press, 2025) Mary E. Hicks shows how Portuguese slaving ship captains harnessed and exploited this hybridity to expand their own traffic in human bondage. At the same time, she reveals how enslaved and free Black mariners capitalized on their shipboard positions and cosmopolitan expertise to participate in small-scale commodity trading on the very coasts where they themselves had been traded as commodities, reshaping societies and cultures on both sides of the Atlantic. Indeed, as Hicks argues, the Bahian slave trade was ruthlessly effective because its uniquely decentralized structure so effectively incorporated the desires and financial strategies of the very people enslaved by it. Yet taking advantage of such fraught economic opportunities ultimately enabled many enslaved Black mariners to purchase their freedom. And, in some cases, they became independent transatlantic slave traders themselves.Hicks thus explores the central paradox that defined the lives of the captive cosmopolitans and, in doing so, reveals a new history of South Atlantic slavery centered on subaltern commercial and cultural exchange. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism (W.W. Norton, 2025) is an in-depth analysis into the growing industry of green technologies and the environmental, social, and political consequences of the mining it requires. In the fight against climate change, lithium's role in reducing emissions by powering green economies is a mixed blessing. Drawing on groundbreaking fieldwork in Chile, Nevada, and Portugal, Riofrancos explores the environmental and social costs of the global race to expand lithium mining amid supply chain concerns. With haunting descriptions of vulnerable ecosystems, she examines how mining harms landscapes, provokes protest, takes center stage in national politics, and links countries on the peripheries of the world economy to huge corporations, commodity markets, and powerful investors. Riofrancos traces the history of global extraction from colonial conquest, to the 1970s energy crisis, to the still uncertain green future. While an unregulated mining boom could inflict irreversible harm, Riofrancos offers compelling ideas about how to harmonize climate action with social justice. Across the world’s extractive frontiers, we encounter the most brutal aspects of capitalism—but also witness inspiring visions for our planetary future. Thea Riofrancos is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Providence College and the Strategic Co-Director of the Climate Community Institute Alec Fiorini is a PhD student at Queen Mary University London's Centre for Labour, Sustainability and Global Production (CLaSP) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices