Economic History

Most Americans — and people worldwide — understand that despite our remarkable technological advances, something is deeply wrong with the direction of our country and world.

John Cassidy, a staff writer at The New Yorker and a Pulitzer Prize finalist, delivers a sweeping, dramatic history of capitalism as seen through the eyes of its fiercest critics....

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....

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

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....

Originally publishing in 1944, The Road to Serfdom was seen as heretical for its passionate warning against the dangers of state control over the means of production....

In this unique exploration of the role of risk in our society, Peter Bernstein argues that the notion of bringing risk under control is one of the central ideas that distinguishes modern times from the distant past.

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

Ray Dalio, the legendary investor and #1 New York Times bestselling author of Principles—whose books have sold more than five million copies worldwide—shares his unique template for how debt crises work and principles for dealing with them well....

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....

The definitive volume on Enron's amazing rise and scandalous fall, from an award-winning team of Fortune investigative reporters....

These selections from the many writings of Thomas Sowell over a period of half a century cover social, economic, cultural, legal, educational, and political issues....

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

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....

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....

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)....

More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals....

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....

Palo Alto’s weather is temperate, its people are educated and enterprising, its corporations are spiritually and materially ambitious and demonstrably world-changing....

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

At the dawn of World War I, a young academic named John Maynard Keynes hastily folded his long legs into the sidecar of his brother-in-law’s motorcycle for an odd, frantic journey that would change the course of history....

Spanning five centuries of history, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers offers a sweeping exploration of how nations rise to dominance and fall into decline.

In this classic work of economic history and social theory, Karl Polanyi analyzes the economic and social changes brought about by the great transformation of the Industrial Revolution.

A revelatory and unexpected history of the rise of American capitalism—and an argument that entrepreneurial leaders in government, not the mythical “free market,” created the most dynamic economy the world has ever known.

Universal basic income. A 15-hour workweek. Open borders. Does it sound too good to be true? One of Europe's leading young thinkers shows how we can build an ideal world today....

El empresario multimillonario Ricardo B. Salinas—quien compró su primer Bitcoin a $200—comparte las lecciones monetarias duramente aprendidas y transmitidas a través de cuatro generaciones. Tras sobrevivir a la devastadora hiperinflación de México, Salinas fue testigo directo de cómo el dinero fiduciario destruye la riqueza, corrompe la sociedad y despoja a las personas comunes de su futuro.

Branko Milanovic is best known as one of the world's leading experts on global inequality. But he is also an unusually wide-ranging and penetrating commentator on subjects across economics and beyond, in politics, history, and culture. This book brings together his most searching, provocative, and entertaining articles of recent years, providing an abundance of vital insights into the evolution and dynamics of the world under capitalism.

Accountability after Economic Crisis reconstructs the captivating story of how different nations responded to the 2008 economic crisis, one of the most challenging economic downturns in modern history. The book focuses on puzzling cross-country variations in policies of accountability.

Who really funds the American experiment—and who just cashes the check? The Subsidized States of America delivers a sharp, data-driven examination of the fiscal contradictions at the heart of American federalism. Despite decades of anti-government rhetoric, many red states are deeply dependent on federal aid—aid funded disproportionately by taxpayers in blue states. This provocative, thoroughly researched book maps the hidden flow of money, revealing how federal tax dollars migrate from coastal cities to rural interiors, subsidizing everything from military bases to Medicaid, ...

A journey through the ideas that shaped the global economy What differentiates mercantilism from physiocracy? How did the theories of Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes revolutionize economic thought? And what challenges do artificial intelligence, inequality, and climate change pose to modern economies? In this work, we explore the evolution of economic ideas from Antiquity to the challenges of the 21st century.