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.

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....

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....

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.....

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....

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....

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....

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

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

From the Samuel Johnson Prize-winning author of Mao's Great Famine comes a timely and compelling account of China in the wake of Chairman Mao....

Bitcoin did not appear out of nowhere. For decades prior to Satoshi Nakamoto’s invention, a diverse group of computer scientists, privacy activists, and heterodox economists tried to create a digital form of money that could operate independently of government control.

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....

When Money Dies is the classic history of what happens when a nations currency depreciates beyond recovery....

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....

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....

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....

A century of expanding government has distorted financial markets, stoked massive inequality, and soaked America in debt. Capitalism didn’t fail, it was ruined. What went wrong with capitalism? Ruchir Sharma’s account is not like any you will have heard before.

In a revelatory dispatch from the frontier of capitalist extremism, an acclaimed historian of ideas shows how free marketeers are realizing their ultimate goal: an end to nation-states and the constraints of democracy....

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.

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....

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....

Most Americans — and people worldwide — understand that despite our remarkable technological advances, something is deeply wrong with the direction of our country and world. There are a variety of causes but Mr. Lepard believes, and wrote this book because, too many are missing the one, principal underlying cause: The Money Is Broken.

Economist and writer Chris Hughes takes us on a journey through the modern history of American capitalism, relating the captivating stories of the most effective marketcrafters and the ones who bungled the job. He reveals how both Republicans and Democrats have consistently attempted to organize markets for social and political reasons, like avoiding gasoline shortages, reducing inflation, fostering the American aviation and semiconductor industries, fighting climate change, and supporting financial innovation.

The ways that statisticians and governments measure the economy were developed in the 1940s, when the urgent economic problems were entirely different from those of today. In The Measure of Progress, Diane Coyle argues that the framework underpinning today's economic statistics is so outdated that it functions as a distorting lens, or even a set of blinkers. When policymakers rely on such an antiquated conceptual tool, how can they measure, understand, and respond with any precision to what is happening in today's digital economy?

A stimulating and inviting tour of modern economics centered on the story of one of its most important breakthroughs. In 1980, the twenty-four-year-old graduate student Paul Romer tackled one of the oldest puzzles in economics. Eight years later he solved it.

In this visionary Shortest History of Migration, Ian Goldin uncovers key moments of cultural exchange while carefully examining empire, slavery, and war. Throughout, we meet famous explorers (Zheng He), exiles (Pablo Neruda), and everyday people in extraordinary circumstances: a Jewish man saved by the Kindertransport, a Japanese gardener who blossomed in Mexico City.