Book picks similar to
Freedom and Growth: The Rise of States and Markets in Europe, 1300-1750 by Stephan R. Epstein
economic-history
history
economics
medieval-economic-history
Dear F*cking Lunatic: 101 Obscenely Rude Letters to Donald Trump
Aldous J. Pennyfarthing - 2018
With acid tongue planted firmly in cheek, author Aldous J. Pennyfarthing takes on the president’s unsurpassed ignorance, rampant racism, shocking pettiness, vertiginous dishonesty, and more. Based on the viral Daily Kos post of the same name. Approximately 345 pages.
The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century
Immanuel Wallerstein - 1975
Countless authors have sung its praises. Aside from splendid surroundings, unlimited library and secretarial assistance, and a ready supply of varied scholars to consult at a moment's notice, what the center offers is to leave the scholar to his own devices, for good or ill. Would that all men had such wisdom. The final version was consummated with the aid of a grant from the Social Sciences Grants Subcommittee of the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research of McGill University.
The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression
Amity Shlaes - 2007
She shows how both Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt failed to understand the prosperity of the 1920s and heaped massive burdens on the country that more than offset the benefit of New Deal programs.
Unspeakable Truths: Facing the Challenge of Truth Commissions
Priscilla B. Hayner - 2002
Hayner examines twenty major truth commissions established around the world paying special attention to South Africa, El Salvador, Argentina, Chile, and Guatemala.
Scandinavian Unexceptionalism: Culture, Markets and the Failure of Third-Way Socialism (Readings in Political Economy)
Nima Sanandaji - 2015
It is also vital that Scandinavians themselves read this book to help them understand the market reforms that are essential for a successful future.
The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece
Josiah Ober - 2015
Through most of its long history, Greece was poor. But in the classical era, Greece was densely populated and highly urbanized. Many surprisingly healthy Greeks lived in remarkably big houses and worked for high wages at specialized occupations. Middle-class spending drove sustained economic growth. Classical wealth produced a stunning cultural efflorescence lasting hundreds of years.Why did Greece reach such heights in the classical period--and why only then? And how, after "the Greek miracle" had endured for centuries, did the Macedonians defeat the Greeks, seemingly bringing an end to their glory? Drawing on a massive body of newly available data and employing novel approaches to evidence, Josiah Ober offers a major new history of classical Greece and an unprecedented account of its rise and fall.Ober argues that Greece's rise was no miracle but rather the result of political breakthroughs and economic development. The extraordinary emergence of citizen-centered city-states transformed Greece into a society that defeated the mighty Persian Empire. Yet Philip and Alexander of Macedon were able to beat the Greeks in the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BCE, a victory enabled by the Macedonians' appropriation of Greek innovations. After Alexander's death, battle-hardened warlords fought ruthlessly over the remnants of his empire. But Greek cities remained populous and wealthy, their economy and culture surviving to be passed on to the Romans--and to us.A compelling narrative filled with uncanny modern parallels, this is a book for anyone interested in how great civilizations are born and die.This book is based on evidence available on a new interactive website. To learn more, please visit http://polis.stanford.edu/
Obsession: Inside the Washington Establishment's Never-Ending War on Trump
Byron York - 2020
That call, starting on the margins of the party and the press, steadily grew until it became a deafening media and Democratic obsession. It culminated first in the Mueller report - which failed to find any evidence of criminal wrongdoing on the part of the president - and then in a failed impeachment.And yet, even now, the Democrats and their media allies insist that President Trump must be guilty of something.They still accuse him of being a Russian stooge and an obstructer of justice. They claim he was “not exonerated” by the Mueller report.But the truth, as veteran reporter Byron York makes clear - using his unequaled access to sources inside Congress and the White House - is that Democrats and the media were gripped by an anti-Trump hysteria that blinded them to reality.
Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China
Philip P. Pan - 2008
Pan offers an unprecedented inside look at the momentous battle underway for China's future. On one side is the entrenched party elite determined to preserve its authoritarian grip on power. On the other is a collection of lawyers, journalists, entrepreneurs, activists, hustlers, and dreamers striving to build a more tolerant, open, and democratic China. The outcome of this dramatic, hidden struggle will shape China's rise to superpower status-and determine how it affects the rest of the world.From factories in the rusting industrial northeast to a tabloid newsroom in the booming south, from a small-town courtroom to the plush offices of the nation's wealthiest tycoons, Pan speaks with men and women fighting and sacrificing for change. An elderly surgeon exposes the government's cover-up of the SARS epidemic. A filmmaker investigates the execution of a student in the Cultural Revolution. A blind man is jailed for leading a crusade against forced abortions carried out under the one-child policy.Out of Mao's Shadow offers a startling perspective on China and its remarkable transformation, challenging conventional wisdom about the political apathy of the Chinese people and the notion that prosperity leads automatically to freedom. Like David Remnick's Lenin's Tomb, this is the moving story of a nation in transition, of a people coming to terms with their past.
The Asylum: The Renegades Who Hijacked the World's Oil Market
Leah Mcgrath Goodman - 2011
The Asylum is a stunning exposé by a seasoned Wall Street journalist that once and for all reveals the truth behind America’s oil addiction in all its unscripted and dysfunctional glory.In the tradition of Too Big to Fail and Liar’s Poker, author Leah McGrath Goodman tells the amazing-but-true story of a band of struggling, hardscrabble traders who, after enduring decades of scorn from New York’s stuffy financial establishment, overcame more than a century of failure, infighting, and brinksmanship to build the world’s reigning oil empire—entirely by accident.
The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam
Douglas Murray - 2017
Douglas Murray takes a step back and explores the deeper issues behind the continent's possible demise, from an atmosphere of mass terror attacks and a global refugee crisis to the steady erosion of our freedoms. He addresses the disappointing failure of multiculturalism, Angela Merkel’s U-turn on migration, and the Western fixation on guilt. Murray travels to Berlin, Paris, Scandinavia, and Greece to uncover the malaise at the very heart of the European culture, and to hear the stories of those who have arrived in Europe from far away.Declining birth rates, mass immigration, and cultivated self-distrust and self-hatred have come together to make Europeans unable to argue for themselves and incapable of resisting their own comprehensive alteration as a society and an eventual end. This sharp and incisive book ends up with two visions for a new Europe--one hopeful, one pessimistic--which paint a picture of Europe in crisis and offer a choice as to what, if anything, we can do next. But perhaps Spengler was right: "civilizations like humans are born, briefly flourish, decay, and die."
The Roaring Twenties: A Captivating Guide to a Period of Dramatic Social and Political Change, a False Sense of Prosperity, and Its Impact on the Great Depression
Captivating History - 2018
Like so many good stories, it got its start from a time of great turmoil and ended in a dramatic fashion. What happened between 1920 and 1929 has passed beyond history and has become legend. The lessons of the 1920s are still relevant today. Many of the debates and issues of the era are still part of the national conversation. Economic policies, consumer behaviors and mass culture of the 1920s are reflected in our culture almost 100 years later. By understanding the past, we can better prepare for the future and this new captivating history book is all about giving you that knowledge. This book includes topics such as:
World War One and the 1920s
Fear of the Other
Old Causes Finishing Business
The Cost of Prohibition
A New World
African-Americans
Politics and Policies
How Did It All End?
And much, much more!
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Outside the Box: How Globalization Changed from Moving Stuff to Spreading Ideas
Marc Levinson - 2020
It is also one of the most contentious issues of our time. While it may have made goods less expensive, it has also sent massive flows of money across borders and shaken the global balance of power. Outside the Box offers a fresh and lively history of globalization, showing how it has evolved over two centuries in response to changes in demographics, technology, and consumer tastes.Marc Levinson, the acclaimed author of The Box, tells the story of globalization through the people who eliminated barriers and pursued new ways of doing business. He shows how the nature of globalization changed dramatically in the 1980s with the creation of long-distance value chains. This new type of economic relationship shifted manufacturing to Asia, destroying millions of jobs and devastating industrial centers in North America, Europe, and Japan. Levinson describes how improvements in transportation, communications, and computing made international value chains possible, but how globalization was taken too far because of large government subsidies and the systematic misjudgment of risk by businesses. As companies began to account properly for the risks of globalization, cross-border investment fell sharply and foreign trade lagged long before Donald Trump became president and the coronavirus disrupted business around the world.In Outside the Box, Levinson explains that globalization is entering a new era in which moving stuff will matter much less than moving services, information, and ideas.
The Grimaldis of Monaco: Centuries of Scandal, Years of Grace
Anne Edwards - 1992
Inside Camp David: The Private World of the Presidential Retreat
Michael Giorgione - 2017
Intensely private and completely secluded, the president's personal campground is situated deep in the woods, up miles of unmarked roads that are practically invisible to the untrained eye. Now, for the first time, we are allowed to travel along the mountain route and directly into the fascinating and intimate complex of rustic residential cabins, wildlife trails, and athletic courses that make up the presidential family room. For seventy-five years, Camp David has served as the president's private retreat. A home away from the hustle and bustle of Washington, this historic site is the ideal place for the First Family to relax, unwind, and, perhaps most important, escape from the incessant gaze of the media and the public. It has hosted decades of family gatherings for thirteen presidents, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Barack Obama, including holiday celebrations, reunions, and even a wedding. But more than just a weekend getaway, Camp David has also been the site of private meetings and high-level summits with foreign leaders to foster diplomacy. Former Camp David commander Rear Admiral Michael Giorgione, CEC, USN (Ret.), takes us deep into this enigmatic and revered sanctuary. Combining fascinating first-person anecdotes of the presidents and their families with storied history and interviews with commanders both past and present, he reveals the intimate connection felt by the First Families with this historic retreat.
States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control
Jeffrey Herbst - 2000
There, the interaction of power and space is dramatically different from what occurred in Europe. In his groundbreaking book, Jeffrey Herbst places the African state-building process in a truly comparative perspective, examining the problem of state consolidation from the precolonial period, through the short but intense interlude of European colonialism, to the modern era of independent states. Herbst's bold contention--that the conditions now facing African state-builders existed long before European penetration of the continent--is sure to provoke controversy, for it runs counter to the prevailing assumption that colonialism changed everything.In identifying how the African state-building process differs from the European experience, Herbst addresses the fundamental problem confronting African leaders: how to extend authority over sparsely settled lands. Indeed, efforts to exert control over vast, inhospitable territories of low population density and varied environmental and geographical zones have resulted in devastating wars, millions of refugees, and dysfunctional governments perpetrating destructive policies.Detailing the precise political calculations of distinct African leaders, Herbst isolates the basic dynamics of African state development. In analyzing how these leaders have attempted to consolidate power, he is able to evaluate a variety of policy alternatives for dealing with the fundamental political challenges facing African states today.