Economic History

The true, behind-the-scenes history of the people who built Silicon Valley and shaped Big Tech in America....

Titan is the first full-length biography based on unrestricted access to Rockefeller’s exceptionally rich trove of papers. A landmark publication full of startling revelations, the book indelibly alters our image of this most enigmatic capitalist....

Michael Lewis intelligently - and humorously - explains the current economic crisis in The Big Short....

Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries.....

Richard Cockett gives us the entirety of an extraordinary story of how one city made the modern world—and how we all remain inescapably Viennese....

Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are the four most influential companies on the planet. Just about everyone thinks they know how they got there. They're wrong....

Milton Friedman was, alongside John Maynard Keynes, the most influential economist of the twentieth century. In Milton Friedman, historian Jennifer Burns tells Friedman’s extraordinary story with the nuance it deserves....

If you asked most people what forces led to today’s unprecedented income inequality and financial crashes, no one would say the Federal Reserve. For most of its history, the Fed has enjoyed the fawning adoration of the press....

Big tech has replaced capitalism's twin pillars—markets and profit—with its platforms and rents. With every click and scroll, we labor like serfs to increase its power....

An explosive, deeply reported exposé of McKinsey & Company, the international consulting firm that advises corporations and governments, that highlights the often drastic impact of its work on employees and citizens around the world....

Acclaimed economist and BBC broadcaster Linda Yueh profiles the great economic minds who focused on the big questions: growth, innovation, and the nature of markets....

Called by H.L. Mencken, "one of the few economists in history who could really write," Henry Hazlitt achieved lasting fame for this brilliant but concise work....

Life is getting better at an accelerating rate. The pessimists insist that we will reach a turning point and things will get worse. But they have been saying this for 200 years....

In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty analyzes a unique collection of data from 20 countries, ranging as far back as the 18th century, to uncover key economic and social patterns....

Richard H. Thaler has spent his career studying the radical notion that the central agents in the economy are humans - predictable, error-prone individuals....

A real-life thriller about the most tumultuous period in America's financial history by an acclaimed New York Times reporter....

It’s easy to look at the state of the world around us and feel hopeless. We live in an era marked by war, climate crisis, political polarization, and acute inequality—and yet many of us feel powerless to do anything about these profound issues....

The bestselling author of No Logo shows how the global "free market" has exploited crises and shock for three decades, from Chile to Iraq....

Through the last 150 years of American history, Ijeoma Oluo exposes the devastating consequences of white male supremacy on women, people of color, and white men themselves....

Innovation is the main event of the modern age, the reason we experience both dramatic improvements in our living standards and unsettling changes in our society....

The little-engine-that-could story of how a band of scrappy entrepreneurs are reviving the enterprise of manufacturing clothing in the United States....

Pacific Gas and Electric was a legacy company built by innovators and visionaries, establishing California as a desirable home and economic powerhouse. In California Burning, Wall Street Journal reporter and Pulitzer finalist Katherine Blunt examines how that legacy fell apart....

An extraordinary mythology has grown up around the Third Reich that hovers over political and moral debate even today. Adam Tooze's controversial book challenges the conventional economic interpretations of that period....

At the height of the roaring 20s, Swedish émigré Ivar Kreuger made a fortune raising money in America and loaning it to Europe in exchange for matchstick monopolies....

The "rich and gripping" true story of the first time machines came for human jobs—and how the Luddite uprising explains the power, threat, and toll of big tech and AI today (Naomi Klein)....

With unparalleled access, and having interviewed hundreds of people – from Amazon executives to competitors to small businesses who rely on its marketplace to survive – Dana Mattioli exposes how Amazon was driven by a competitive edge to dominate every industry it entered, bulldozed all who stood in its way, reshaped the retail landscape, transformed how Wall Street evaluates companies, and altered the very nature of the global economy.

Welcome to Gold Rush to Modern Day Mines - a definitive guide to the fascinating world of gold mining, spanning centuries and continents. This eBook is a treasure trove of stories, facts, and insights that will surprise and delight anyone interested in the history, culture, and economic significance of this glittering metal. From the legendary California Gold Rush that transformed America's destiny to the discovery of Witwatersrand, the world's largest gold deposit, in South Africa, this book takes you on a riveting journey through some of the most iconic moments in the history of gold ...

Prepare to delve into the dynamic universe of economics as you've never seen it before. "China's Economic Ascendance" presents an enthralling and comprehensive in-depth examination of China's extraordinary economic journey. This is no mere textbook but a vibrant and exciting exploration that will captivate anyone with an interest in China, economics, or the intriguing interplay between them. In this detailed tome, you'll traverse the terrain from the foundations of Mao's era to the present day, covering a broad spectrum of topics from China's integration into the global economy, the entry ...

Are you ready for a journey back in time to the thrilling era of the Gold Rush? Get ready to step into the shoes of gold miners who risked it all to strike it rich. Life in the Gold Rush is an insightful and captivating eBook that delves into the realities of life as a gold miner. With 20 diverse and fascinating chapters, this eBook offers an in-depth look at the lure of gold, the daily routine of a gold miner, and the tools of the trade. We explore how technology has transformed modern mining and the economic impact of gold mining. But this eBook is not just a lesson in history: we also ...

Dive into the fascinating realm of "Economic Curiosities," a riveting eBook that offers an extraordinary tour of the economic world, unveiling the unseen forces that shape our financial landscape. Discover an enthralling tapestry of topics, where each chapter turns the page on conventional wisdom to illuminate the hidden dimensions and intriguing intersections of modern economics. Embark on a journey through the nuanced layers of Behavioral Economics, gaining insight into how cognitive biases and emotions sway financial decisions and markets. Uncover the complexities of high-tech economies ...

An eye-opening account of the failures of our financial system, the sources of its staying power, and the path to meaningful economic reform.

Over the past two centuries, economic growth has freed billions from poverty and made our lives far healthier and longer. As a result, the unfettered pursuit of growth defines economic life around the world. Yet this prosperity has come at an enormous price. At this time of uncertainty about growth and its value, award-winning economist Daniel Susskind provides an essential reckoning. In a sweeping analysis full of historical insight, he argues that we cannot abandon growth but shows instead how we must redirect it, making it better reflect what we truly value.

This book explores what we can learn from the global history of financial bubbles and their booms and busts. Warren Buffett once said, "The first rule of an investment is don't lose money. And the second rule of an investment is don't forget the first rule. And that's all the rules there are." The tales of overreaching hubris and greed that follow in this book remind us not to get carried away and risk investment losses that are hard to recover from. Bulls and Bears make money, but Hogs get slaughtered. Navigating the financial markets' twists and turns can often feel like deciphering a ...

In 1995, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin re-defined the next thirty years of currency policy that ushered in exceptional prosperity and cheap foreign goods, but the strong dollar policy also played a role in the devastating hollowing out of America’s manufacturing sector. Meanwhile, abroad, the United States increasingly turned to the dollar as a weapon of war. In Paper Soldiers, Saleha Mohsin reveals how the Treasury Department has shaped U.S. policy at home and overseas by wielding the American dollar as a weapon—and what that means in a new age of crisis.

In Vulture Capitalism, acclaimed journalist Grace Blakeley takes on the world’s most powerful corporations by showing how the causes of our modern crisis are the intended result of our capitalist system. It’s not broken, it’s working exactly as planned. From JPMorgan to Boeing, Henry Ford to Richard Nixon, Blakeley shows us exactly where late-stage capitalism has gone wrong. Searing, explosive and timely, Vulture Capitalism is the book you need to understand what is happening in the world around you – and what you can do to change it.

It’s easy to look at the state of the world around us and feel hopeless. We live in an era marked by war, climate crisis, political polarization, and acute inequality—and yet many of us feel powerless to do anything about these profound issues. We’ve been assured that unfettered capitalism is necessary to ensure our freedom and prosperity, even as we see its corrosive effects proliferating daily. Why, in our age of unchecked corporate power, are most of us living paycheck to paycheck?

The little-engine-that-could story of how a band of scrappy entrepreneurs are reviving the enterprise of manufacturing clothing in the United States.

This is a digestible summary of the most authoritative (but too long) treatise of all time on Austrian Economics. No crafty Keynesianism. No academic obfuscation. Rather, a succinct series of building blocks, based on actual human behavior, that lead to rational truths at the societal level. The original is condensed to one-sixteenth its length and organized into the three states of relative market freedom: free, mixed (government interventions), and un-free (socialism). Use the Synthesis as a sort of Cliff’s Notes to a timeless classic.

This volume in a series of world history case studies focuses on Scottish businessman Richard Oswald, a man who epitomized the inter-connectivity of the Atlantic world in the eighteenth century, as well as the horrors that unity produced. By establishing his own triangular trade with a slave station in Sierra Leone, a plantation in Florida, and an office in London, Oswald became a wealthy man who benefited from the misery of others. Because he also served as the chief British negotiator in the Peace of Paris (1783) that ended the American Revolution, Oswald's life also provides us with a ...

In The Two-Parent Privilege, Melissa S. Kearney makes a data-driven case for marriage by showing how the institution's decline has led to a host of economic woes—problems that have fractured American society and rendered vulnerable populations even more vulnerable.