Economic History

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

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

The New York Times bestseller from business journalist Christopher Leonard infiltrates one of America’s most mysterious institutions—the Federal Reserve—to show how its policies spearheaded by Chairman Jerome Powell over the past ten years have accelerated income inequality and put our...

Impressive in scope, How Asia Works is essential listening for anyone interested in a region that will shape the future of the world....

The New York Times bestseller hailed as "the best business book of 2010" (Huffington Post). As soon as the financial crisis erupted, the finger-pointing began. Should the blame fall on Wall Street, Main Street, or Pennsylvania Avenue? On greedy traders, misguided regulators, sleazy subprime...

Longlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year 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) The most urgent story in modern tech begins...

In Lombard Street, the money market is pictured as it really was in 1850-1870 and as Bagehot saw it with philosophic eyes....

A San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller An NPR Best Book of the Year The New York Times’s Global Economics Correspondent masterfully reveals how billionaires’ systematic plunder of the world—brazenly accelerated during the pandemic—has transformed 21st-century life and dangerously...

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 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....

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.

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....

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.

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....

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

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...

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....

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....

In April 1956, a refitted oil tanker carried 58 shipping containers from Newark to Houston....

In Killing the Planet: How A Financial Cartel Doomed Mankind, best-selling authors Rodney Howard-Browne and Paul L. Williams investigate the true motives and consequences of the Pilgrim Society....

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.

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....

Through a rich narrative that weaves together history, economics, and technology, How Progress Ends reveals that managing the future requires us to draw the right lessons from the past.

In A Splendid Exchange, William J. Bernstein tells the extraordinary story of global commerce....

In this absorbing, smart, and accessible blend of economic and cultural history in the vein of the works of Michael Lewis and Andrew Ross Sorkin, a financial executive and CNBC contributor examines the five most significant stock market crashes in the United States over the past century...

En este libro pionero, Ray Dalio, uno de los inversores más importantes de nuestro tiempo, que previó la crisis financiera mundial de 2008 y la crisis de la deuda europea de [redacted-phone-number], comparte por primera vez su explicación al detalle de lo que él denomina «el ciclo largo de la deuda». Comprender este ciclo es vital para ayudar a los responsables públicos, los inversores y el público general a entender dónde estamos y adónde nos dirigimos en materia de deuda.

Can you imagine even the poorest country in the world achieving the prosperity and quality of life of today's Switzerland—by 2100? Seems crazy, doesn't it? After all, we live in uncertain times. But we have pulled off marvels before. Human advances over the past 100 years have been unprecedented. Can we achieve another century of progress? This book, a major research effort from the McKinsey Global Institute, explores the advances of the past century and what drove them—what we call the progress machine.

From the collapse of empires to the rise of fiat currency, Satoshi’s Gift traces the arc of monetary history with clarity and conviction—revealing how the global financial system became fragile, manipulated, and unsustainable. In this timely and provocative book, Michael Hollomon Jr. unpacks the economic, political, and technological forces that led to Bitcoin’s creation—and makes the case that it may be our last, best chance to reclaim financial sovereignty in a world addicted to debt, inflation, and centralized control.

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 Illicit Global Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know® answers the key questions about how illicit global markets are structured and operate, how they intersect with state institutions and practices, how they interact with the legal economy, and how they shape and are shaped by domestic and international politics.