Economic History

Edward Chancellor traces the history of interest from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia, through debates about usury in Restoration Britain and John Law's ill-fated Mississippi scheme, to the global credit booms of the twenty-first century....

Sebastian Mallaby turns his unprecedented access to the industry's central players into a riveting, character-driven account of venture capital and the world it has made....

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

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....

As former Prime Minister and our longest-serving Chancellor, Gordon Brown has been a guiding force for Britain and the world over three decades....

Around the world in Britain, the United States, Asia and the Middle East, there are people with power who are cashing in on chaos, exploiting bloodshed and catastrophe to brutally remake our world in their image.... 

Whether you're buying lunch, looking for a job or applying for a mortgage, the thing we call 'the economy' is going to set the terms. A pity, then, that many of us have no idea how the economy actually works. That's where this book comes in....

When Money Dies is the classic history of what happens when a nations currency depreciates beyond recovery....

The abridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Niall Ferguson's epic history, The Ascent of Money. Behind each great historical phenomenon there lies a financial secret....

From one of the world's leading economists comes a sweeping new history of the twentieth century—a century that left us vastly richer, yet still profoundly dissatisfied....

Why is there so much inequality? In this short book, world-famous economist Yanis Varoufakis sets out to answer his 11-year-old daughter Xenia's deceptively simple question....

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

In this exposé, former Wall Street insider Nomi Prins shows how the 2007-2008 financial crisis turbo-boosted the influence of central bankers and triggered a massive shift in the world order. Collusion will change the way we understand the new world of international finance....

The English East India Company was the mother of the modern multinational....

Called by H.L. Mencken, "one of the few economists in history who could really write," Henry Hazlitt achieved lasting fame...

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

In the space of a few months, across Asia, a miracle became a nightmare. This was the Asian financial crisis of 1995-98. In this economic crisis, hundreds of people died in rioting, political strongmen were removed, and hundreds of billions of dollars were lost by investors....

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....

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....

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 high street since Big Bang in 1986.... 

More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed totally different suites of plants and animals....

These selections from the many writings of Thomas Sowell over a period of half a century cover social, economic, cultural, legal, educational, and political issues....

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....

 This is definitive take on the wildest story of the year - the David vs. Goliath GameStop short squeeze, a tale of fortunes won and lost overnight that may end up changing Wall Street forever....

Peter L. Bernstein tells the story of history's most coveted, celebrated, and inglorious asset: gold. From the ancient fascinations of Moses and Midas...

Alex Gladstein has a lot to say about Bitcoin, human rights, financial privilege, and personal freedom. In Check Your Financial Privilege, he says it, starting with the fact that anyone born into a reserve currency like the euro, yen, or pound has financial privilege over the 89 percent of the world population born into weaker systems. As CSO of the Human Rights Foundation, Gladstein is uniquely positioned to detail the rise of Bitcoin from cypherpunk dream to the real-life Bitcoin stories happening to real people across the globe.

The story of modern management generally looks to the factories of England and New England for its genesis. But after scouring through old accounting books, Caitlin Rosenthal discovered that Southern planter-capitalists practiced an early form of scientific management. They took meticulous notes, carefully recording daily profits and productivity, and subjected their slaves to experiments and incentive strategies comprised of rewards and brutal punishment. 

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. 

In The Price of Time, Edward Chancellor traces the history of interest from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia, through debates about usury in Restoration Britain and John Law's ill-fated Mississippi scheme, to the global credit booms of the twenty-first century. We generally assume that high interest rates are harmful, but Chancellor argues that, whenever money is too easy, financial markets become unstable. He takes the story to the present day, when interest rates have sunk lower than at any time in the five millennia since they were first recorded.

The Making of Modern Economics presents a bold and engaging history of economics—the dramatic story of how the great economic thinkers built today’s rigorous social science. This comprehensive yet accessible introduction to the major economic philosophers begins with Adam Smith and continues through to the present day. It examines the contributions each one made to our understanding of the role of the economist, the science of economics and economic theory.