Showing titles in Economic History

The English East India Company was the mother of the modern multinational. Its trading empire encircled the globe, importing Asian luxuries such as spices, textiles, and teas. But it also conquered much of India with its private army and broke open China's markets with opium. The Company's practices shocked its contemporaries and still reverberate today.

Why do stock and housing markets sometimes experience amazing booms followed by massive busts, and why is this happening more and more frequently? In order to answer these questions, William Quinn and John D. Turner take us on a riveting ride through the history of financial bubbles. As they do so, they help us understand why bubbles happen and why some have catastrophic economic, social, and political consequences while others have actually benefited society. 

Read by author Soumaya Keynes 'An amazing book' – Paul Krugman, Nobel laureate in economics 'Timely, witty and wise' – Tim Harford, broadcaster and bestselling author of The Undercover Economist 'A breezy, low-jargon guide' – Helen Lewis, bestselling author of The Genius Myth A witty...

This edition of Super Imperialism is the finalized version of the analysis that Michael Hudson first published in the wake of President Nixon severing the dollar's link to gold in August 1971. Closing the gold window had been imminent since the London Gold Pool was disbanded in 1968 in response to the U.S. overseas military spending that had pushed the balance of payments into steadily deepening deficit since the Korean War (1950-51).

The world's leading Marxist geographer and economist guides general listeners through major concepts in capitalism and Marx's masterwork For decades, David Harvey has been teaching Marx's work, particularly Capital, to great acclaim. He has analyzed chapter by chapter—sometimes...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * MORE THAN ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD “A provocative read...There are few tomes that coherently map such broad economic histories as well as Mr. Dalio’s. Perhaps more unusually, Mr. Dalio has managed to identify metrics from that history that can be applied to...

The classic introduction to economic thought, now updated in time for the publication of New Ideas from Dead CEOs This entertaining and accessible introduction to the great economic thinkers throughout history? Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and more?shows how...

“In Dark Towers, David Enrich tells the story of how one of the world’s mightiest banks careened off the rails, threatening everything from our financial system to our democracy through its reckless entanglement with Donald Trump. Darkly fascinating and yet all too real, it’s a tale that...

Richard H. Thaler has spent his career studying the radical notion that the central agents in the economy are humans - predictable, error-prone individuals. Misbehaving is his arresting, frequently hilarious account of the struggle to bring an academic discipline back down to earth - and change the way we think about economics, ourselves, and our world.

In the first intellectual history of neoliberal globalism, author Quinn Slobodian follows a group of thinkers from the ashes of the Habsburg Empire to the creation of the World Trade Organization to show that neoliberalism emerged less to shrink government and abolish regulations than to redeploy them at a global level.

A grand and revelatory portrait of Wall Street’s most storied investment bank Wall Street investment banks move trillions of dollars a year, make billions in fees, pay their executives in the tens of millions of dollars. But even among the most powerful firms, Lazard Frères & Co. stood apart...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson, read by John Sackville. Most history is hierarchical: it's about popes, presidents, and prime ministers. But what if that's simply because they create the historical archives? What if we are missing equally...

Bloomsbury presents The Downfall of Money by Frederick Taylor, read by Gordon Griffin A timely narrative account of the biggest financial crisis in modern history and its human consequences by the author of Dresden and The Berlin Wall. 'Excellent … This is a dramatic story, well told' Wall...

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. Against the Gods chronicles the remarkable intellectual adventure that liberated humanity from oracles and soothsayers by means of the powerful tools of risk management that are available to us today.

In April 1956, a refitted oil tanker carried 58 shipping containers from Newark to Houston. From that modest beginning, container shipping developed into a huge industry that made the boom in global trade possible. The Box tells the dramatic story of the container's creation, the decade of struggle before it was widely adopted, and the sweeping economic consequences of the sharp fall in transportation costs that containerization brought about.

“No one in this world, so far as I know, has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.” —H. L. Mencken H. L. Mencken was wrong. In this endlessly fascinating book, New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea...

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. These changes, and the unprecedented and sustained economic growth that followed, transformed China and the world.

Plagues upon the Earth is a monumental history of humans and their germs. Weaving together a grand narrative of global history with insights from cutting-edge genetics, Kyle Harper explains why humanity’s uniquely dangerous disease pool is rooted deep in our evolutionary past, and why its growth is accelerated by technological progress. He shows that the story of disease is entangled with the history of slavery, colonialism, and capitalism, and reveals the enduring effects of historical plagues all around us, in patterns of wealth, health, power, and inequality.

The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes investigates the trade routes between Rome and the powerful empires of inner Asia, including the Parthian regime which ruled ancient Persia (Iran). It explores Roman dealings with the Kushan Empire which seized power in Bactria (Afghanistan) and laid claim to the Indus Kingdoms. Further chapters examine the development of Palmyra as a leading caravan city on the edge of Roman Syria and consider trade ventures through the Tarim territories that led Roman merchants to Han China.

The pre-eminent exponent of anti-monopoly law explains why we have no option but to break Big Tech’s monopolies, and that doing so would unleash innovation and growth. Today’s dominant tech platforms – the places where we exchange information and buy things online – could be the most...