Economic History

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....

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....

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....

Tower of Basel is the first investigative history of the world's most secretive global financial institution.

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.

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....

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....

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

In The Unwinding, George Packer, author of The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq, tells the story of the United States over the past three decades in an utterly original way....

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....

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

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....

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....

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

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.

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)....

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

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....

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....

Alexander Hamilton has become a global celebrity. Millions know his name and imagine knowing the man. But what did he really want for the country? What risks did he run in pursuing those vaulting ambitions? Who tried to stop him? How did they fight?

Harvard-trained economist Andrew Leigh presents a new way to understand the human story. From the dawn of agriculture to AI, here is story of how ingenuity, greed, and desire for betterment have, to an astonishing degree, determined our past, present, and future.

Andrew Mellon, one of the most accomplished businessmen of his era, is almost unknown today. To this shy, diffident (but brilliant) man fell the daunting task of collecting the war debts from European governments still devastated by WWI and struggling to recover economically. Dealing with the US Congress and the heads of foreign governments on the world stage became one of the great adventures of his life. Mellon vs. Churchill presents Winston Churchill through a different lens, focusing on his service as Chancellor of the Exchequer when Great Britain was the largest debtor to the US.

The US racial wealth gap is large, and it's compounding. It's time to close it. Minding the Wealth Gap shines a light on people doing this important work and explores how you can get involved too. Generations of public and private practices have left Black households $15 trillion and 400 years behind white households. Minding the Wealth Gap is both a powerful catalyst and a call to arms, urging America's entrepreneurs, executives, government officials, and other leaders to join these efforts and take meaningful steps toward a more equitable future for all.

Why Rich People Love Fascism is a provocative examination of the unholy alliance between capital and authoritarianism. This book cuts through the myths of political neutrality and liberal virtue to reveal a stark truth: when the wealthy face the threat of democracy, they consistently choose fascism. Not by accident. Not under duress. But willingly, and often eagerly. Drawing on a century of history, the book traces how economic elites have repeatedly aligned themselves with far-right regimes—from Mussolini’s Italy to Hitler’s Germany to Pinochet’s Chile—not because of shared ...

In Behold the Leviathan: The Unusual Rise of Modern India, Saurabh Mukherjea and Nandita Rajhansa provide a gripping picture of how 1.5 billion Indians are combining to spectacular effect to create a range of social and economic outcomes which have no precedent in any emerging economy. For example, India now has as many chess grandmasters as the United States, and the expertise of its scientists has guided India's space modules to the dark side of the moon, a feat no other country has achieved.

Empire in Denial: The Slow Collapse of American Capitalism is a searing, unsparing account of how the United States traded real prosperity for a delusion—and how that delusion is now collapsing in plain sight. For decades, Americans were told a story: work hard, play by the rules, and the rewards would follow. But since the 1970s, wages have stagnated while costs exploded. Debt replaced income. Consumption masked inequality. Institutions—once the foundation of civic trust—were sold off, hollowed out, or captured by corporate interests. The result is an economy that functions perfectly...

Over the past sixty years, businesses and government have increasingly offloaded financial risk onto US households. The toll has pushed tens of millions of people to the financial breaking point, worsened social inequity, and jeopardized US democracy. In Sharing Risk, consumer advocate and scholar Patricia A. McCoy draws on the nation’s traditions of risk sharing to argue that society should lift up families by pooling and spreading the financial risks that they now must bear alone.

Bitcoin Rising: The New Gold Standard in Decentralized Finance By J. R. Glenn In a world where financial systems are shifting and digital innovation is reshaping economies, Bitcoin is emerging as more than just a cryptocurrency—it’s becoming the new gold standard of decentralized finance. Bitcoin Rising offers readers a deep dive into the revolutionary potential of Bitcoin, exploring its origins, use cases, and future role in the global economy. With insightful analysis and real-world case studies, J. R. Glenn unpacks how Bitcoin compares to traditional assets like gold, why it's ...

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.

Dieses Buch erzählt eine große Geschichte, die Jahrtausende alte Geschichte der Wirtschaft. Vom Beginn der landwirtschaftlichen Revolution bis zur Digitalisierung deckt es die verborgenen wirtschaftlichen Kräfte hinter Krieg, Innovation und sozialem Wandel auf. Es zeichnet nach, wie der Kapitalismus und das heutige Marktsystem entstanden sind, und stellt die wichtigsten Ideen und Menschen vor, die die Wirtschaft für immer geprägt haben.

The Compassionate Capitalists pulls back the curtain on the forgotten entrepreneurs who built empires without grinding their workers into dust. From Henry Ford doubling wages overnight to Madam C.J. Walker building a beauty empire that empowered thousands of Black women, these industrialists dared to prove that you could run a successful business without being a soulless overlord.