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Horwitz, Steven
History of Economic Thought; Methodology
20th Century: Pre WWII
20th Century: WWII and post-WWII
General, International, or Comparative
Apr 11, 2013
Published by EH.Net (April 2013)
Eamonn Butler, Friedrich Hayek: The Ideas and Influence of the Libertarian Economist. London: Harriman House and Institute of Economic Affairs, 2012. vii + 151 pp. £15 (paperback), ISBN: 978-0-857191755.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Steven Horwitz, Department of Economics, St. Lawrence University.
This short book by Eamonn Butler, Director of the Adam Smith Institute in London, is a very accessible and largely well-written “once over lightly” introduction to the work of F.A. Hayek, and not just his economics. Though a Ph.D. in philosophy, Butler has written other books on Milton Friedman, Adam Smith, and Ludwig von Mises, and those books demonstrated a solid knowledge of all...
McFall, Todd A.
Business History
Transport and Distribution, Energy, and Other Services
20th Century: WWII and post-WWII
North America
Apr 4, 2013
Published by EH.Net (April 2013)
David George Surdam, The Rise of the National Basketball Association. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2012. vii + 247 pp. $25 (paperback), ISBN: 978-0-252-07866-8
Reviewed for EH.Net by Todd A. McFall, Department of Economics, Wake Forest University.
The bulk of my growing up occurred in the 1980s in Indiana, a time and place in which basketball was king. Looking back, it’s easy to see why. I’m not exaggerating when I say that Indiana University coach Bob Knight could have staged a coup and become governor of the state, and not many of us would have thought twice about it. This was the era when he was at the height of his powers as a college basketball coach (NCAA...
Singleton, John D.
History of Economic Thought; Methodology
19th Century
Europe
Apr 3, 2013
Published by EH.Net (April 2013)
Robert B. Ekelund, Jr. and Edward O. Price III, The Economics of Edwin Chadwick: Incentives Matter. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2012. xi + 246 pp. $100 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-1-78100-503-3.
Reviewed for EH.Net by John D. Singleton, Department of Economics, Duke University.
To the extent that Edwin Chadwick is known to historians of economics, Robert Ekelund (Professor Emeritus in Economics at Auburn University) and Edward Price (Professor Emeritus at Oklahoma State University) have helped inform this awareness through a number of articles over the past 35 years. The Economics of Edwin Chadwick: Incentives Matter collects these insights and aims to establish...
Arthi, Vellore
Household, Family and Consumer History
Social and Cultural History, including Race, Ethnicity and Gender
18th Century
19th Century
20th Century: Pre WWII
20th Century: WWII and post-WWII
General, International, or Comparative
Apr 2, 2013
Published by EH.Net (April 2013)
Beatrice Moring, editor, Female Economic Strategies in the Modern World. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012. xiii + 201 pp. £60/$99 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-1-84893-350-7.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Vellore Arthi, Faculty of History, University of Oxford.
In Female Economic Strategies in the Modern World, Beatrice Moring and her contributors add to ongoing debates on women’s work and wellbeing, compiling varied but thematically linked historical accounts of female survival.
Moring, in her introduction, argues that women were more resilient and had greater access to diverse survival strategies than is traditionally assumed. The eight cases presented in the chapters...
Tomlinson, B. R.
Industry: Manufacturing and Construction
18th Century
19th Century
Asia
Mar 27, 2013
Published by EH.Net (March 2013)
Indrajit Ray, Bengal Industries and the British Industrial Revolution, 1757-1857. New York: Routledge, 2011. xiii +290 pp. $145 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-415-59477-6.
Reviewed for EH.Net by B. R. Tomlinson, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
The topic of the enforced deindustrialization of Asia as a consequence of the rise of industrializing Europe at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century is an ancient staple of global economic history. This is especially true for stories of the interaction between Britain and India as colonial rule was being established after 1750. The key concept of a “drain of wealth”...
Bourne, Jenny
Servitude and Slavery
19th Century
North America
Mar 21, 2013
Published by EH.Net (March 2013)
John J. Zaborney, Slaves For Hire: Renting Enslaved Laborers in Antebellum Virginia. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2012. xi + 218 pp. $42.50 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-8071-4512-8
Reviewed for EH.Net by Jenny Bourne, Department of Economics, Carleton College.
John Zaborney has sifted through numerous secondary and primary sources – including letters, account books, diaries, and court records – to craft a description of slave hiring in antebellum Virginia. Although he claims to provide a “picture ... radically different from any yet advanced” (p. 5), his contribution is actually a bit more modest. What the book does well is to...
Lubinski, Christina
Business History
19th Century
Europe
Mar 6, 2013
Published by EH.Net (March 2013)
Andrew Popp, Entrepreneurial Families: Business, Marriage and Life in the Early Nineteenth Century. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012. viii + 188 pp. $99 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-1-84893-236-4.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Christina Lubinski, German Historical Institute, Washington, DC.
Entrepreneurial Families is an example of micro-history at its best. Andrew Popp, professor at the University of Liverpool Management School, describes his agenda as one of “writing outwards, towards wider concerns” (p. 5) through a case study – in this case the history of John and Elizabeth Shaw who founded their wholesale hardware business around 1800. He was able to rely on the...
Jones, Eric
Economic Development, Growth, and Aggregate Productivity
Economywide Country Studies and Comparative History
General or Comparative
Asia
Europe
Middle East
Feb 7, 2013
Published by EH.Net (February 2013)
Ian Morris, The Measure of Civilization: How Social Development Decides the Fate of Nations. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013. xvi + 381 pp. $30 (cloth), ISBN: 978-0-691-15568-5.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Eric Jones, La Trobe University.
Ian Morris is one of the most energetic researchers around, one of the most ambitious and one of the most talented. Not content with narrative observations on world history, he tries in this book to ground them by measuring four traits: energy capture (the output of food, fuel and raw materials), organization, the capacity to make war, and information technology. Of the four, energy capture bulks...
Earley, Martin
Government, Law and Regulation, Public Finance
19th Century
20th Century: Pre WWII
20th Century: WWII and post-WWII
Europe
Feb 4, 2013
Published by EH.Net (February 2013)
Clive Lee, The Growth of Public Expenditure in the United Kingdom from 1870 to 2005. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. ix + 285 pp. £67.50/$100 (hardcover). ISBN: 978-0-230-35414-2.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Martin Earley, Department of History, Bristol University.
Clive Lee (emeritus professor at the University of Aberdeen) is a noted authority on the Scottish economy and on Britain and its regional economy more generally. He wrote a short discussion paper, in 2000, on “The Origins of Leviathan: The Growth of Public Expenditure and Taxation in the United Kingdom, 1880-1938.” This book is a considerable expansion of the discussion paper in 247 pages of text plus a...
Chiswick, Carmel U.
Education and Human Resource Development
Ancient
Medieval
Europe
Middle East
Jan 31, 2013
Published by EH.Net (January 2013)
Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70-1492. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012. xvii + 323 pp. $39.50 (hardcover) ISBN: 978-0-691-14487-0.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Carmel U. Chiswick, Department of Economics, George Washington University.
The Chosen Few by Maristella Botticini (Bocconi University) and Zvi Eckstein (Tel Aviv University) reminds us – for those who need reminding – how Cliometrics can transform our understanding of historical events. They examine Jewish history from an economic perspective with results that are both innovative and insightful.
The book...