New Books in Economic and Business History Podcast
1) Henry Grabar, "Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World" (Penguin, 2023)
Parking, quite literally, has a death grip on America: each year a handful of Americans are tragically killed by their fellow citizens over parking spots. But even when we don't resort to violence, we...Show More
2) Jordan Frith, "Barcode" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Barcodes are about as ordinary as an object can be. Billions of them are scanned each day and they impact everything from how we shop to how we travel to how the global economy is managed. But few peo...Show More
3) Anna Zeide, "US History in 15 Foods" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
From whiskey in the American Revolution to Spam in WWII, food reveals a great deal about the society in which it exists. Selecting 15 foods that represent key moments in the history of the United Stat...Show More
4) Sara Byala, "Bottled: How Coca-Cola Became African" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Travel to virtually any African country and you are likely to find a Coca-Cola, often a cold one at that. Bottled asks how this carbonated drink became ubiquitous across the continent, and what this r...Show More
5) Kathryn Cornell Dolan, "Breakfast Cereal: A Global History" (Reaktion Books, 2023)
Breakfast Cereal: A Global History (Reaktion, 2023) by Dr. Kathryn Dolan presents the long, distinguished and surprising history of breakfast cereal. Simple, healthy and comforting, breakfast cereals ...Show More
Kathryn Cornell Dolan, "Breakfast Cereal: A Global History" (Reaktion Books, 2023)
1:07:58 | Dec 29th, 2025
6) Sven Beckert, "Capitalism: A Global History" (Allen Lane, 2025)
No other phenomenon has shaped human history as decisively as capitalism. It structures how we live and work, how we think about ourselves and others, how we organize our politics. Sven Beckert, autho...Show More
7) Simon Avenell, "A History of Postwar Japan: Recovery, Prosperity, and Transformation" (U Hawaii Press, 2025)
This sweeping history tells the story of contemporary Japan from its defeat in the Asia-Pacific War in 1945 until the early decades of the new millennium. How did the Japanese people deal with the col...Show More
8) Matthew Scobie and Anna Sturman, "The Economic Possibilities of Decolonisation" (Bridget Williams Books, 2024)
What do the economics of decolonisation mean for the future of Aotearoa? This question drives the work of Dr. Matthew Scobie and Dr. Anna Sturman as they explore the complex relationship between tanga...Show More
9) Molly-Claire Gillett, "Irish Lacemaking: Art, Industry and Cultural Practice" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Following the career of the Irish lace designer and inspector Emily Anderson (1856-1948), Irish Lacemaking: Art, Industry and Cultural Practice (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. Molly-Claire Gillett traces a ...Show More
10) Maddalena Alvi, "The European Art Market and the First World War: Art, Capital, and the Decline of the Collecting Class, 1910–1925" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
The outbreak of the First World War shattered the established European art market. Amidst fighting, looting, confiscations, expropriation fears and political and economic upheaval, an integrated marke...Show More