Economic History

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....

A lively, inviting account of the history of economics, told through events from ancient to modern times and the ideas of great thinkers in the field....

Default is the riveting story of Argentina's sovereign debt drama, which reveals the obscure inner workings of sovereign debt restructuring. This detailed case study describes the intense fight over the role of the IMF in Argentina's 2005 debt restructuring.

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.

This compelling history of the Crash--the first to follow the market closely for the two years leading up to the disaster--illuminates a major turning point in our history....

These Are the Plunderers traces the thirty-year history of corporate takeovers in America and private equity’s increasing dominance....

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....

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....

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....

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

Demonstrating how changes in health and living standards have transformed our lives, The Great Escape is a powerful guide to addressing the well-being of all nations....

Sacred Economics traces the history of money from ancient gift economies to modern capitalism, revealing how the money system has contributed to alienation, competition, and scarcity....

The epic successor to one of the most important books of the century: at once a retelling of global history, a scathing critique of contemporary politics, and a bold proposal for a new and fairer economic system....

Odd Arne Westad and Chen Jian chronicle how an impoverished and terrorized China experienced radical political changes in the long 1970s and how ordinary people broke free from the beliefs that had shaped their lives during Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

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....

This book is the first comprehensive account of how Australia attained the world's highest living standards within a few decades of European settlement....

Following a remarkable epoch of greater dispersion of wealth and opportunity, we are inexorably returning towards a more feudal era marked by greater concentration of wealth and property, reduced upward mobility, demographic stagnation, and increased dogmatism....

Investors who ignore the past are lost in the present and blind to the future. Investing in U.S. Financial History reveals that there is almost no financial event that is unprecedented.

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)....

How could General Electric—perhaps America's most iconic corporation—suffer such a swift and sudden fall from grace? This is the definitive history of General Electric's epic decline, as told by the two Wall Street Journal reporters who covered its fall....

The History of Money explores how money and the myriad forms of exchange have affected humanity, and how they will continue to shape all aspects of our lives....

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 work of 2 obscure Scottish chemists destroyed the presidential prospects of William Jennings Bryan....

Alex Gladstein has a lot to say about Bitcoin, human rights, financial privilege, and personal freedom....