Economic History

Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries.....

Most Americans — and people worldwide — understand that despite our remarkable technological advances, something is deeply wrong with the direction of our country and world.

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....

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....

In How Progress Ends, Carl Benedikt Frey challenges the conventional belief that economic and technological progress is inevitable.

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.

Here, anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom: He shows that before there was money, there was debt....

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....

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....

"La crise. On ne parlait que de ça, mais sans savoir réellement qu'en dire, ni comment en prendre la mesure..."

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....

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....

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.

The expanded edition includes a new epilogue in four parts, adding an extra hour to the audiobook. Pride, greed, and power have driven men to do the unthinkable....

Joyce Appleby gives us a fascinating introduction to this most potent creation of mankind from its origins to now.

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....

Max Weber's best-known and most controversial work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, first published in 1904, remains to this day powerful and fascinating....

Stress Test is the story of Tim Geithner’s education in financial crises. As president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and then as President Barack Obama’s secretary of the Treasury, Timothy F. Geithner helped the United States navigate the worst financial crisis....

Economics has the capacity to offer us deep insights into some of the most formidable problems of life and offer solutions to them, too. He shows how economics uncovers these processes, finds explanations for them, and how it forms policies and solutions....

In The Capital Order, political economist Clara E. Mattei explores the intellectual origins of austerity to uncover its originating motives: the protection of capital—and indeed capitalism—in times of social upheaval from below....

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....

Richard H. Thaler has spent his career studying the radical notion that the central agents in the economy are humans - predictable, error-prone individuals....

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....

No institution, government, or country is “too big to fail.” A behind-the-scenes account of what led to the 2008 crisis - and may soon lead to a bigger one....

In How Progress Ends, Carl Benedikt Frey challenges the conventional belief that economic and technological progress is inevitable. For most of human history, stagnation was the norm, and even today progress and prosperity in the world's largest, most advanced economies—the United States and China—have fallen short of expectations. To appreciate why we cannot depend on any AI-fueled great leap forward, Frey offers a remarkable and fascinating journey across the globe, spanning the past 1,000 years, to explain why some societies flourish and others fail in the wake of rapid technological change

The classical era in the history of economics is an important part of the history of ideas in general, and its implications reach beyond the bounds of the economics profession. On Classical Economics is a book from which students can learn both history and economics. It is not simply a Cook’s tour of colorful personalities of the past but a study of how certain economic concepts and tools of analysis arose, and how their implications were revealed during the controversies that followed.

Say's Law—the idea that "supply creates its own demand"—has been a basic concept in economics for almost two centuries. Thomas Sowell traces its evolution as it emerged from successive controversies, particularly two of the most bitter and long lasting in the history of the discipline, the "general glut controversy" that reached a peak in the 1820s, and the Keynesian Revolution of the 1930s.

The dollar is everywhere. In your wallet. In your bank account. In your debt, your paycheck, your rent, your retirement — even your dreams. But what is it, really? This isn’t just a history of American money. It’s a story of belief. From revolution to global empire, In Green We Trust traces the rise of the dollar — not just as currency, but as mythology. Gold. Oil. Paper. Wars. Crashes. Promises. Lies. Every chapter unpacks how a piece of green paper became the most powerful object on Earth — and what happens when the world starts questioning what it’s really worth.

From $5 workdays and assembly lines to failed jungle utopias and antisemitic newspapers, Ford traces how one man’s obsession with control rewired labor, society, and even ideology. Henry Ford didn’t just manufacture vehicles — he mass-produced a system where people became parts, mobility became dependence, and efficiency became the highest virtue. Along the way, he inspired nations, built empires, and — whether he meant to or not — lit sparks that helped fuel one of history’s darkest regimes.