Showing titles in Economic History

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Boomerang by Michael Lewis, read by Dylan Baker. Having made the U.S. financial crisis comprehensible for us all in The Big Short, Michael Lewis realised that he hadn't begun to get grips with the full story. How exactly had it come to hit the rest of...

With incomparable wisdom, skill, and wit, world-renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith traces the history of the major speculative episodes in our economy over the last three centuries. Exposing the ways in which normally sane people display reckless behavior in pursuit of profit, Galbraith asserts that our "notoriously short" financial memory is what creates the conditions for market collapse. By recognizing these signs and understanding what causes them we can guard against future recessions and have a better hold on our country's (and our own) financial destiny. 

The defining, behind-the-scenes chronicle of one of the most extraordinary, beloved, and dominant pop cultural entities in America’s history -- Marvel Comics – and the outsized personalities who made Marvel including Martin Goodman, Stan Lee, and Jack Kirby. “Sean Howe’s history of...

An absorbing and original narrative history of American capitalism NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2017 BY THE ECONOMIST From the days of the Mayflower and the Virginia Company, America has been a place for people to dream, invent, build, tinker, and bet the farm in pursuit of a better life. Americana...

A revolutionary new history of humankind through the prism of work, from the origins of life on Earth to our ever-more automated present. The work we do brings us meaning, moulds our values, determines our social status and dictates how we spend most of our time. But this wasn't always the case: for 95 percent of our species' history, work held a radically different importance. How, then, did work become the central organisational principle of our societies? How did it transform our bodies, our environments, our views on equality and our sense of time?

Brought to you by Penguin. Although the Second World War was still a long way from being won, even by early 1941, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was already planning for peace. America’s entry of the war may still have been almost a year away, but he could already see the new world...

*Now a major movie starring Seth Rogen, Paul Dano, Pete Davidson, Shailene Woodley, Sebastian Stan and Nick Offerman* The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders that Brought Wall Street to its Knees. Bestselling author Ben Mezrich offers a gripping, beat-by-beat account...

Bloomsbury presents Vulture Capitalism, written and read by Grace Blakeley. * Longlisted for the inaugural Women's Prize for Non-Fiction * * A Foyles Top 10 Read for March and one of Glamour's Best Books of March * 'Blakeley charts a path forward based in hope, democracy and liberation' NAOMI...

The UK is, at the same time, both one of the world's most successful economies and one of Europe's laggards. The country contains some of Western Europe's richest areas such as the South East of England, but also some of its poorest such as the North East or Wales. Looking into the past helps understand why. Two Hundred Years of Muddling Through tells the story of how Britain's economy and politics have interacted with each other from the time of the Industrial Revolution right up to the pandemic of 2020.

Brought to you by Penguin. We live under an ideology that preys on every aspect of our lives: our education and our jobs; our healthcare and our leisure; our relationships and our mental wellbeing; even the planet we inhabit – the very air we breathe. So pervasive has it become that, for most...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK * WINNER OF THE J ANTHONY LUKAS WORK-IN-PROGRESS AWARD *NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY FINANCIAL TIMES, NPR, KIRKUS REVIEWS, AND SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL * FINALIST FOR THE FINACIAL TIMES/MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Bank that Lived a Little by Phillip Augar, read by Jonathan Keeble. Based on unparalleled access to those involved, and told with compelling pace and drama, The Bank that Lived a Little is the story of one of the most familiar names on the British...

A revelatory and entertaining book about the pitfalls of how we measure our economy and how to correct them, by an award-winning editor of The Financial Times. According to GDP, the economy is in a golden era: economic growth has risen steadily over the past 70 years and shows no sign of stopping. But if this is the case, why are we living in such fractured times, with global populism on the rise and wealth inequality as stark as ever?

Inflation: What It Is, Why It’s Bad, and How to Fix It explains what’s behind the worst inflationary storm in more than forty years—one that is dominating the headlines and shaking Americans by their pocketbooks. The cost-of-living explosion since the COVID pandemic has raised alarms about a possible return of a 1970’s-style “Great Inflation.” Some observers even fear a descent into the kind of Weimar-style hyperinflation that has torn apart so many nations. Is this true? If so, what should be done? How should we prepare for the future?

To modern Western society, capitalism is the air we breathe, and most people rarely think to question it, for good or for ill. But knowing what makes capitalism work - and what makes it fail - is crucial to understanding its long-term health and the vast implications for the global economy that go along with it. 

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “It is one of the best narrative histories I’ve read.” —The Wall Street Journal A New York Times Notable Book of 2025 One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2025 Named a BEST BOOK OF 2025 by The Washington Post, TIME, The Economist, Air Mail...

With high stock and bond prices and the rising cost of housing, the post-subprime boom may well turn out to be another illustration of Shiller's influential argument that psychologically driven volatility is an inherent characteristic of all asset markets. In other words, Irrational Exuberance is as relevant as ever. Previous editions covered the stock and housing markets - and famously predicted their crashes. This edition expands its coverage to include the bond market, so that the book now addresses all of the major investment markets. 

Brought to you by Penguin. It is no exaggeration to say that venture capital has been central to the greatest legal creation of wealth anywhere, and enabled much of the world we live in, yet we know surprisingly little about this strange tribe of financiers. In The Power Law, Sebastian Mallaby...

Ray Dalio, the legendary investor and international 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. This template allowed his firm, Bridgewater...

Here, anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom: He shows that before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods - that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.