European Economic History

Western civilization has given us modern science, the wealth of free-market economics, the security of law, a sense of human rights and freedom, charity as a virtue, splendid art and music, philosophy grounded in reason, and innumerable other gifts we take for granted.

In the late 1890s, Edmund Dene Morel, a young British shipping company agent, noticed something strange about the cargoes of his company’s ships as they arrived from and departed for the Congo, Leopold II’s vast new African colony. Incoming ships were crammed with valuable ivory and rubber...

How the world’s oldest asset secretly shapes our modern economy In The Land Trap, Mike Bird—Wall Street editor at The Economist—reveals how this ancient asset still exerts outsize influence over the modern world. From the speculative land grabs of colonial America to China's real estate...

From the bestselling author of The Sleepwalkers comes an epic history of the 1848 revolutions that swept Europe, and the charismatic figures who propelled them forward, with deep resonance and frightening parallels to today. As history, the uprisings of 1848 have long been overshadowed by the...

Historians and economists commonly cite natural disasters and foreign invasions to explain cultural collapses. The problem is, human families have been suffering and overcoming disasters for thousands of years. Humans cover most of the earth; they have learned to live on polar ice and in arid deserts. They have adapted to tropical islands and rain forests. Humans live literally everywhere. And wherever humans wander, they create cultures and civilizations. Civilizations fall apart when human economies and cultures collapse. The question is--what forces, over long, long time periods, divide ...

The chilling and little-known story of Adolf Hitler's eight-year march to the pinnacle of German politics. On the night of January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler leaned out of a spotlit window of the Reich chancellery in Berlin, bursting with joy. The moment seemed unbelievable, even to Hitler. After an...

Since its initial publication, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order has become a classic work of international relations and one of the most influential books ever written about foreign affairs. An insightful and powerful analysis of the forces driving global politics, it...

From the Prime Minister of Canada, a bold and urgent argument for the foundational change that is required if we are to build an economy and society based not on market values but on human values Our world is full of fault lines—growing inequality in income and opportunity, systemic racism...

*One of Bloomberg's Best Books of the Year* The master geopolitical forecaster and New York Times bestselling author of The Next 100 Years focuses on the United States, predicting how the 2020s will bring dramatic upheaval and reshaping of American government, foreign policy, economics, and...

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Philip Stevens. This definitive recording includes an introduction by Christopher Brooke. Thomas Hobbes lived through the Thirty Years War and Britain's civil wars, and the trauma of these events led to his great masterpiece of...

How the world broke—and how we can still save it The liberal world order that emerged after World War II—and expanded triumphantly following the Cold War—is unraveling. Multilateral cooperation is giving way to multipolar rivalry and conflict. Global norms are eroding. What comes next will...

From the bestselling author of The Silk Roads comes an updated, timely, and visionary book about the dramatic and profound changes our world is undergoing right now—as seen from the perspective of the rising powers of the East. "All roads used to lead to Rome. Today they lead to Beijing."...

When European missionaries first arrived in India in the sixteenth century, they entered a world both fascinating and bewildering. Hinduism, as they saw it, was a pagan mess: the worship of devils and monsters by a people who burned women alive, performed outlandish rites and fed children to...

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Arinzé Kene, writer and performer of Olivier Award nominated Misty, and also known for his roles in Youngers, Informer and Eastenders. This definitive recording includes an Introduction by Gareth Stedman Jones. The Communist...

""Variably genial, cautionary, lyrical, admonitory, terrifying, horrifying and inspiring…A lifetime of thought, travel, reading, imagination and memory inform this affecting account."" —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Blending history and anecdote, geography and reminiscence, science and...

The classic introduction to economic thought, now updated in time for the publication of New Ideas from Dead CEOs This entertaining and accessible introduction to the great economic thinkers throughout history? Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and more?shows how...

The year 1971 exists everywhere in Bangladesh-on its roads, in sculptures, in its museums and oral history projects, in its curriculum, in people's homes and their stories, and in political discourse. It marks the birth of the nation, it's liberation. More than 1000 miles away, in Pakistan too...

Hobsbawm discusses the evolution of European economics, politics, arts, sciences, and cultural life from the height of the industrial revolution to the First World War. Hobsbawm combines vast erudition with a graceful prose style to re-create the epoch that laid the basis for the 20th century.

Winner of the International Labor History Award Long before the American Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a motley crew of sailors, slaves, pirates, laborers, market women, and indentured servants had ideas about freedom and equality that would forever change history. The...

Viennese ideas saturate the modern world. From California architecture to Hollywood Westerns, modern advertising to shopping malls, orgasms to gender confirmation surgery, nuclear fission to fitted kitchens—every aspect of our history, science, and culture is in some way shaped by Vienna. 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.