New Books in Economic and Business History

New Books Network
  • 4.9 (13)
  • Books
  • Updated Semiweekly

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork

  1. 16h ago

    Nelson Lichtenstein on Clinton and Neoliberalism

    We are joined by Nelson Lichtenstein, one of the deans of American labor history. The conversation ranges widely, from the tragedy of the Clinton administration and what might have been, to the importance of studying capitalism, to the politics of baby boomer self-loathing—all key parts of the history of the 1990s! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 15m

  2. 2d ago

    Amélie Junqua and Geoffrey Day, "Too Good to Waste: Recycling Paper in the Eighteenth Century" (Bodleian Library, 2026)

    Paper was a precious commodity in the eighteenth century: every sheet was made by hand. There was therefore a significant market in recycling substandard paper from paper mills and discarded proofs and sheets from printers and booksellers for secondary use, alongside a black market in which stealing and receiving stolen paper took place on a vast scale. A single piece of paper could be termed ‘waste’ and yet sold for cash three times in succession, on each occasion performing a useful function. The end user would keep the newly purchased ‘waste’ or paper wrapping in a special drawer from which it would be taken for a myriad household purposes, including cooking, needlework, decoration and hygiene. Popular satirical prints depicted explicit paper uses, while creators of flamboyant papier mâché ceilings concealed the material by gilding it. With over 100 illustrations, and drawing on letters from a range of people from farmers to notable authors and members of the aristocracy, together with meticulous archival research, Too Good to Waste: Recycling Paper in the Eighteenth Century (Bodleian Library, 2026) by Dr. Amélie Junqua and Dr. Geoffrey Day traces the extraordinary history of ingenious paper recycling in eighteenth century England. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    38 min

  3. 4d ago

    A. G. Hopkins, "The Land Where Nothing Works: How Britain Lost the Plot" (Princeton UP, 2026)

    What has happened to Britain? As drivers on its roads can attest, it is the pothole capital of Europe. Once-beautiful towns now feature peeling paint, weeds, and broken railings. Public services are no longer fit for purpose. A malaise seems to infect every aspect of British life: its economy, polity, social order, sense of well-being, domestic regional relationships, and place in the world. In The Land Where Nothing Works: How Britain Lost the Plot (Princeton University Press, 2026), the distinguished historian A. G. Hopkins offers an explanation, tracing Britain’s current problems to decisions made in the 1980s that abandoned its postwar experiment in social democracy and mimicked policies of deregulation and privatisation promoted by the United States. In 1945, the new Labour government’s development programme aimed at creating a social democracy that would benefit all members of society. The counterrevolution launched by Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1979, which remains in force today, promoted individualism and deregulation. The transition from one programme to another was a response to the growth of finance and services centred on the City of London, and to decolonisation, which redirected trade to Europe. The expansion of credit led to the financial crisis of 2008 and the years of austerity that followed, and fuelled the populist movement that culminated in Brexit. Hopkins argues that, instead of following the free-market policies of its mentor, the United States, Britain should draw on its own history of social democracy and borrow from its neighbours in Europe, where communitarian principles continue to be upheld. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    54 min

  4. 4d ago

    Are Capitalism and Democracy Fundamentally Incompatible? A Conversation with Mordecai Kurz

    Today I'm speaking with Mordecai Kurz, Joan Kenney Professor of Economics Emeritus at Stanford University. We are discussing his latest book, Private Power and Democracy's Decline: How to Make Capitalism Support Democracy (MIT Press, 2026). After its high-water mark several decades ago, democracy's status continues to slide globally. Capitalism and democracy, which once seemed to complement each other, now appear at odds. Free-market policies and monopolistic technologies have enriched many while driving inequalities that harm workers. Many have opined on how to fix the political and economic problems of our day, from an embrace of radical libertarian policy to socialist ownership of the means of production. Mordecai Kurz's extensive study of capitalism and democracy charts a path for balancing economic and political freedom. Since the days of Adam Smith, technology has changed rapidly, necessitating new formulations that take into account the private power centers that exercise control much like monarchies did in the Age of Enlightenment. Despite the imbalance, capitalism still remains a driver of technological progress and innovation. How can we make both capitalism and democracy work for the good of everyone? I'm happy today to get the chance to speak with such an illustrious scholar and to learn a bit more about how to understand this defining puzzle of our age. Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 3m

  5. 5d ago

    Gregg Andrews, "Shoe Workers in Hannibal, Missouri: The Rise and Fall of Manufacturing in America’s Hometown, 1890–1970" (LSU Press, 2026)

    In Shoe Workers in Hannibal, Missouri: The Rise and Fall of Manufacturing in America’s Hometown, 1890–1970 (LSU Press, 2026), Dr. Gregg Andrews examines the history of factory laborers in a celebrated Mississippi River town. In the late 1890s, shoe manufacturing transformed Mark Twain’s boyhood home from a steamboat village to a factory town. By the mid-1920s, the St. Louis–based International Shoe Company, the world’s largest shoe manufacturer at the time, controlled all shoe production in Hannibal and continued to do so until it shut down production lines in the 1960s. The company kept a tight grip on the town as it battled to keep out unions and maintain labor at a low cost and in a malleable state. When Hannibal’s shoe workers claimed their right to organize under the New Deal during the Great Depression, the shoe corporation was defiant. The company’s stance sparked mob violence against outside union organizers, nurtured a company union, pitted unionists against company loyalists, and badly divided Hannibal. At the same time, the town was engaged in yearlong festivities to celebrate the centennial of Mark Twain’s birth and the opening of a museum named in his honor. Dr. Andrews’s study of shoe manufacturing and its production workers is thick in detail and rich with the human stories of those whose lives were shaped by the rise and fall of the shoe industry in Hannibal. Andrews captures the shoe workers—white and Black, men and women—in their own words as they describe their jobs, family struggles, and battles to unionize. Dr. Andrews examines the prevailing conditions that led the company to close its production facilities in Hannibal, leaving shoe workers and the town to confront the early shock waves of deindustrialization. His study of an industry that has virtually disappeared in the United States leaves a record for the families of thousands of American shoe workers and the citizens of Hannibal to better understand their history and the role shoe manufacturing played in it. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 10m

  6. 5d ago

    Roberta J. Magnusson, "Urban Infrastructure in Medieval England: Sustainability and Resilience" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2026)

    In the bustling market towns and growing cities of medieval England between 1200 and 1600, public works were the lifelines of urban society. In Urban Infrastructure in Medieval England: Sustainability and Resilience (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026), Dr. Roberta J. Magnusson offers the first comprehensive study of how medieval towns built, financed, and sustained their defenses, bridges, streets, water systems, and harbors. Dr. Magnusson reveals how even modest communities, like the Warwickshire town of Atherstone, boldly pursued projects that reshaped their futures. Grants of tolls and taxes funded paving initiatives, bridge repairs, and fortified walls, while enterprising lords and abbots sponsored sluices, conduits, and quays. These efforts were not confined to England's great cities; small towns with limited means also sought to enhance their competitive edge, even when such investments strained their resources. Drawing on royal records, municipal archives, and archaeological evidence, Dr. Magnusson situates these civic undertakings in their broader social and environmental contexts. She shows how townsmen adapted traditional obligations of labor and charity alongside innovative fiscal tools to sustain projects that could span generations. Yet the balance was fragile. The crises of the fourteenth century—famine, plague, and the harsher climate of the Little Ice Age—undermined local resources, leaving many communities to struggle with maintenance or watch their infrastructures decline. At once a history of engineering, economy, and community, this study illuminates how medieval people conceived of security, health, and prosperity through the material fabric of their towns. By tracing the rise, transformation, and survival of these infrastructures, Dr. Magnusson demonstrates how urban communities navigated centuries of change while shaping the very landscapes in which they lived. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 11m

  7. 6d ago

    Daniel Rood, "In the Shadow of the Great House: A History of the Plantation in America" (Norton, 2026)

    Dan Rood’s In the Shadow of the Great House (W.W. Norton & Co., 2026) is one of the first contemporary books to focus on the primary engine of slavery, race, and capitalism in this country: the plantation. The plantation was invented on the small Atlantic island of São Tomé in the 1500s, and the island also became the site, soon enough, of the first slave revolt. The brutal technology was then perfected in Barbados, where planters worked tens of thousands of African captives to their deaths in sugar factories. But it was in the United States, Rood shows, that the plantation found its most powerful manifestations. In Virginia, Carolina, and then the Deep South, successive plantation revolutions transformed slavery into a much more rigid and oppressive institution. Incomparably wealthy planters now insisted on a rightless, eternally available, “increasing” source of labor, and in the process reinvented human bondage and stamped it onto a single race. But the plantation did not die after the Civil War. It metastasized. From the advent of sharecropping in the late nineteenth century to the rise of cotton in mid-twentieth century California to today’s chicken processing plants, the plantation has cast a long shadow over American life. Rood further documents the “dark retreats” carved out of plantation life by the enslaved. It was the enslaved who offered the most clear-eyed understanding of what the plantation behemoths told us, and still tell us, about our country. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    1h 22m

  8. Jul 6

    Alexandre Frenette, "Blame the Intern: On (Not) Breaking Into the Creative Economy" (Princeton UP, 2026)

    Who gets to be a creative worker? In Blame the Intern: On (Not) Breaking Into the Creative Economy, (Princeton University Press, 2026) Alexandre Frenette, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University, examines the relationship between work and education in the difficult moment of the early career transition from university to industry. Drawing on a detailed case study of the music industry, the book explains and critiques the way internships have come to dominate routes into many careers in contemporary society. An accessible yet theoretically rich read, the book will be of interest to creative workers at any point in their career, as well as sociologists and humanities scholars, along with any reader interested in how and why our workplaces are so unequal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    44 min
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Ratings & Reviews

4.9
out of 5
13 Ratings

About

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork

Information

  • Creator
    New Books Network
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    1.6K
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © New Books Network

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