Showing titles in Economic History

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...

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.

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER / OVER A MILLION COPIES SOLD THE AMERICAN VICE PRESIDENT'S ORIGIN STORY ‘Essential reading for this moment in history’ New York Times 'You will not read a more important book about America this year' Economist ‘Brilliant … offers an acute insight into the...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Economics: The User's Guide, A Pelican Book, by Ha-Joon Chang, read by Jonathan Keeble. What is economics? How does the global economy work? What do different economic theories tell us about the world? In Economics: The User's Guide, bestselling author...

In A Splendid Exchange, William J. Bernstein tells the extraordinary story of global commerce from its prehistoric origins to the myriad controversies surrounding it today. He transports listeners from ancient sailing ships that brought the silk trade from China to Rome in the second century to the rise and fall of the Portuguese monopoly in spices in the 16th.

The Money Delusion dives into the dramatic and devastating stories of nations that printed, borrowed, or gambled their way into ruin. From Weimar Germany’s wheelbarrows of cash to Zimbabwe’s trillion-dollar bills and Argentina’s chronic collapses, this audiobook unpacks how economic arrogance and political desperation triggered financial meltdowns that destroyed savings, starved populations, and shattered empires.

In the century after the Civil War, an economic revolution improved the American standard of living in ways previously unimaginable. Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, home appliances, motor vehicles, air travel, air conditioning, and television transformed households and workplaces. With medical advances, life expectancy between 1870 and 1970 grew from 45 to 72 years. The Rise and Fall of American Growth provides an in-depth account of this momentous era.

A brilliant investigative narrative: How six average Soviet men rose to the pinnacle of Russia's battered economy. David Hoffman, former Moscow bureau chief for

The Washington Post, sheds light onto the hidden lives of Russia's most feared power brokers: the oligarchs. Focusing on six of these ruthless men Hoffman reveals how a few players managed to take over Russia's cash-strapped economy and then divvy it up in loans-for-shares deals.

This is the 2024 edition of Dishonest Money. It has been lightly rewritten and contains a new chapter (Chapter Zero), that describes the danger of CBDCs and the benefits of Bitcoin. If you want to understand how the so-called "Federal Reserve System" operates (how it drives prices up, creates booms and busts, transfers wealth and power from the average working citizen to the elite who pull the strings) set aside a few hours and listen the audiobook version of Dishonest Money: Financing the Road to Ruin.

The defining, behind-the-scenes chronicle of one of the most extraordinary, beloved, and dominant pop cultural entities in America’s history -- Marvel Comics – and the outsized personalities who made Marvel including Martin Goodman, Stan Lee, and Jack Kirby. “Sean Howe’s history of...

Look at a map of the world and you'll see a neat patchwork of nation-states. But this is not where power actually resides. From the 1990s onwards, globalization has shattered the map, leading to an explosion of new legal entities: tax havens, free ports, city-states, gated enclaves and special economic zones. These new spaces are freed from ordinary forms of regulation, taxation and mutual obligation—and with them, ultracapitalists believe that it is possible to escape the bonds of democratic government and oversight altogether.

What causes poverty? Are economic crises inevitable under capitalism? Is government intervention in an economy a helpful approach or a disastrous idea? The answers to such basic economic questions matter to everyone, yet the unfamiliar jargon and math of economics can seem daunting. This clear, accessible, and even humorous book is ideal for young listeners new to economics and to all listeners who seek a better understanding of the full sweep of economic history and ideas.

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.

Manias, Panics, and Crashes is a scholarly and entertaining account of the way that mismanagement of money and credit has led to financial explosions over the centuries. This seventh edition of an investment classic has been thoroughly revised and expanded following the latest crises to hit international markets. Renowned economist Robert Z. Aliber introduces the concept that global financial crises in recent years are not independent events, but symptomatic of an inherent instability in the international system.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Bank that Lived a Little by Phillip Augar, read by Jonathan Keeble. 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...

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, destroyed community, and necessitated endless growth. Today, these trends have reached their extreme—but in...

A Financial Times Most Anticipated Book of 2025 A sweeping, dramatic history of capitalism as seen through the eyes of its fiercest critics. At a time when artificial intelligence, climate change, and inequality are raising fundamental questions about the economic system, Capitalism and Its...

A provocative critique of the pieties and fallacies of our obsession with economic growth We live in a society in which a priesthood of economists, wielding impenetrable mathematical formulas, set the framework for public debate. Ultimately, it is the perceived health of the economy which...

During the 19th century, the United States entered the ranks of the world's most advanced and dynamic economies. At the same time, the nation sustained an expansive and brutal system of human bondage. This was no mere coincidence. Slavery's Capitalism argues for slavery's centrality to the emergence of American capitalism in the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War.

Viennese ideas saturate the modern world. From California architecture to Hollywood Westerns, modern advertising to shopping malls, orgasms to gender confirmation surgery, nuclear fission to fitted kitchens—every aspect of our history, science, and culture is in some way shaped by Vienna. Richard Cockett gives us the entirety of an extraordinary story of how one city made the modern world—and how we all remain inescapably Viennese.