Economic Social History

Cohen shows how smart guys like Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, and Mark Zuckerberg fell in love with a radically individualistic ideal and then mainstreamed it. With these very rich men leading the way, unions, libraries, public schools, common courtesy, and even government itself have been pushed aside to make way for supposedly efficient market-based encounters via the Internet. Donald Trump's election victory was an inadvertent triumph of the "disruption" that Silicon Valley has been pushing. A society that belittles civility, empathy, and collaboration can easily be led astray.

In Women Money Power, business journalist Josie Cox tells the story of women’s fight for freedom and economic equality. This is an inspirational account of brave pioneers who took on social mores and the law, including the “Rosies,” who filled industrial jobs and helped win World War II, the heiress whose fortune helped create the birth control pill, the brassy banker who broke into the boys’ club of the New York Stock Exchange, and the namesake of landmark equal-pay legislation who refused to accept discrimination.

In this stunning new story of political economy, author Eric Robert Morse examines why the modern system has become so unwieldy and explains what must be done to correct it. His astute analysis and fascinating storytelling take readers on an epic journey, from the dawn of free-market capitalism during the age of exploration, through the industrial revolution and Adam Smith, to the rise of Keynesianism and the dominance of the welfare state....

In the 1930s, battered and humbled by the Great Depression, the US financial sector struck a grand bargain with the federal government. Bankers gained a safety net in exchange for certain curbs on their freedom: transparency rules, record-keeping and anti-fraud measures, and fiduciary responsibilities. By the free-market era of the 1980s and 90s, however, Wall Street argued that rules embodied in New Deal-era regulations to protect consumers and ultimately taxpayers were no longer needed - and government agreed.

Des forges antiques aux chaînes de montage, “Histoire générale de l’industrie” fait revivre l’épopée humaine de l’ingéniosité et de la transformation. Ce livre audio dévoile les grandes bascules techniques, les pionniers audacieux et les révolutions silencieuses qui ont façonné nos manières de produire, d’échanger et de vivre.

Between 1995 and 2007, the Republic of Ireland was the worldwide model of successful adaptation to economic globalisation. The success story was phenomenal: a doubling of the workforce; a massive growth in exports; a GDP that was substantially above the EU average. Ireland became the world's largest exporter of software and manufactured the world's supply of Viagra. But there were two big problems....

In 1980, Exxon U.S.A., the world's largest corporation, began development of a five-billion-dollar oil shale industry in the pristine Colorado River Valley. Within eighteen months, Exxon had canceled its elaborate Colony project and 2,100 workers were immediately laid off. Boomtown Blues chronicles the social, environmental, and economic havoc created by one of the most expensive boom and bust cycles in the history of the American West.

This insightful study explores how the economic system Vladimir Putin has developed in Russia works to consolidate control over the country. By appointing his close associates as heads of state enterprises and by giving control of the FSB and the judiciary to his friends from the KGB, he has enriched his business friends from Saint Petersburg with preferential government deals. Thus, Putin has created a super wealthy and loyal plutocracy that owes its existence to authoritarianism.

Foreign aid organizations collectively spend hundreds of billions of dollars annually, with mixed results. Part of the problem in these endeavors lies in their execution. Dan Honig argues that high-quality implementation of foreign aid programs often requires contextual information that cannot be seen by those in distant headquarters. Drawing on a novel database of over 14,000 discrete development projects, Honig concludes that aid agencies will often benefit from giving field agents the authority to use their own judgments to guide aid delivery.

Fermenting Revolution delivers an empowering message about how individuals can change the world through the simple act of having a beer. It is also the first book to view all of the important trends in human history as fundamentally revolving around beer.

The United States stands as the wealthiest, most powerful nation on the face of the earth. But now, in the midst of skyrocketing federal debt, severe economic troubles, political uncertainty, declining morality, a weak church, growing spiritual apathy and apostasy, historic natural disasters, and a myriad of other daunting challenges, many wonder if America’s best days are behind her. Will history’s greatest democracy stage a miraculous comeback, returning to the forefront of the world’s economic and spiritual stage?

In 1784, when Americans first voyaged to China, they confronted Chinese authorities who were unaware that the United States even existed. Nevertheless, a long, complicated, and fruitful trade relationship was born after American traders, missionaries, diplomats, and others sailed to China with lofty ambitions: to acquire fabulous wealth, convert China to Christianity, and even command a Chinese army. In America's First Adventure in China, John Haddad provides a colourful history of the evolving cultural exchange and interactions between these countries.

In London, only those with vast cash deposits can get on the property ladder, private rents have spiralled out of control and the wait for social housing is measured in decades. Once vibrant communities are being uprooted, schools are closing down and homelessness is rampant. It was not always like this. Tracing the last forty years of housing policy, Peter Apps examines this transformation, following a diverse group of Londoners as their fortunes rise and fall across the decades amid the economic forces sweeping through the city.

After two government bailouts of the US economy in less than twenty years, free market ideology is due for serious reappraisal. In Free Market, Jacob Soll details how we got to this current crisis, and how we can find our way out by looking to earlier iterations of free market thought. Tracing the intellectual evolution of the free market from Cicero to Milton Friedman, Soll argues that we need to go back to the origins of free market ideology in order to truly understand it—and to develop new economic concepts to face today’s challenges.

Durante los gobiernos de Vicente Fox Quesada y Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, se desarrolla el "cártel negro", un conglomerado de funcionarios, trabajadores, empresarios, contratistas, inspectores, contralores, agentes aduanales, dirigentes y miembros del sindicato petrolero, políticos, ordeñadores, tapineros, huachicoleros, extorsionadores, defraudadores, contrabandistas y lavadores de dinero que, alineados con los traficantes de droga, se consolidan como una organización empresarial paralela a Pemex.

The world’s largest company, WalMart Stores, has revenues higher than the gross domestic product of all but twentyfive of the world’s countries. Its employees outnumber the populations of almost one hundred nations. The world’s largest asset manager, a New York company called BlackRock, controls assets greater than the national reserves of any country on the planet.

New York Times best-selling author Ted C. Fishman reveals the stunning challenges of a world awash with seasoned citizens. By 2030, those over 50 will outnumber people under 17 for the first time in history. Fishman explores the resulting impact on families, businesses, nations, and medical care.

An enlightening and entertaining interrogation of the myth of American self-reliance and the idea of hard work as destiny “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” This phrase, arguably Thomas Edison’s most famous quote, has been drilled into the minds of...

In this fully updated fourth edition, Pinder and Usherwood cover the migrant crisis and the UK's decision to leave the Union, set in the context of a body that is now involved in most areas of public policy. Discussing how the EU continues to draw in new members, they conclude by considering the future of the Union and the choices and challenges that may lie ahead.

In 2002, the town of Galesburg, a slowly declining Rustbelt city of 33,000 in western Illinois, learned that it would soon lose its largest factory, a Maytag refrigerator plant that had anchored Galesburg's social and economic life for decades. Workers at the plant earned $15.14 an hour, had good insurance, and were assured a solid retirement. In 2004, the plant was relocated to Reynosa, Mexico, where workers sometimes spent 13-hour days assembling refrigerators for $1.10 an hour.