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Previous Newsletter Issues
Baten, Joerg
Living Standards, Anthropometric History, Economic Anthropology
18th Century
19th Century
20th Century: Pre WWII
Europe
Jan 16, 2013
Published by EH.Net (January 2013)
Boris Mironov, The Standard of Living and Revolutions in Russia, 1700–1917. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2012. xxxii + 668 pp. $145 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-415-60854-1
Reviewed for EH.Net by Joerg Baten, Department of Economic History, University of Tuebingen.
Boris Mironov has written an outstanding book on the development of a particularly interesting Empire – the trends of the biological standard not only of Russians, but also those of Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and all other nationalities that were part of this Empire are traced here for the first time. Mironov’s main hypothesis is that there was not a systemic crisis, which should be visible as a decline of the...
Redenius, Scott A.
Financial Markets, Financial Institutions, and Monetary History
18th Century
19th Century
20th Century: Pre WWII
20th Century: WWII and post-WWII
North America
Jan 15, 2013
Published by EH.Net (January 2013)
Martijn Konings, The Development of American Finance. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. xii + 199 pp. $90 (hardback), ISBN: 978-0-521-19525-6.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Scott A. Redenius, Department of Economics, Brandeis University.
As the blurb on the inside cover notes, the decline of the U.S.-led international financial order has been long predicted. Yet, despite financial crises and the buildup of debt, the U.S. state retains significant financial flexibility and international influence. In The Development of American Finance, Martijn Konings, Lecturer in Political Economy at the University of Sydney, looks to U.S....
Wheelock, David C.
Financial Markets, Financial Institutions, and Monetary History
Government, Law and Regulation, Public Finance
20th Century: Pre WWII
North America
Jan 14, 2013
Published by EH.Net (January 2013)
John A. Fliter and Derek S. Hoff, Fighting Foreclosure: The Blaisdell Case, the Contract Clause, and the Great Depression. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2012. x + 222 pp. $20 (paperback), ISBN: 978-0-7006-1872-9.
Reviewed for EH.Net by David C. Wheelock, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
John A. Fliter and Derek S. Hoff, professors of political science and history, respectively, at Kansas State University, have written an engaging history of mortgage foreclosures during the Great Depression – Fighting Foreclosure: The Blaisdell Case, the Contract Clause, and the Great Depression. The focus of Fighting Foreclosure is on the Minnesota...
Hoppit, Julian
Business History
International and Domestic Trade and Relations
18th Century
19th Century
Europe
Latin America, incl. Mexico and the Caribbean
North America
Jan 11, 2013
Published by EH.Net (January 2013)
Sheryllynne Haggerty, ‘Merely for Money’? Business Culture in the British Atlantic, 1750-1815. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2012. xiv + 287 pp. $100 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-1-84631-817-7.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Julian Hoppit, Department of History, University College London.
In a way, this book is a behavioral study of merchants trading across the Atlantic in the era of the American, French, and early industrial revolutions. As such, it is much less concerned with prices and profits, supply and demand, ships and ports, laws and government, than with hopes and fears, conventions and customs, friendships and networks. It explores the culture of business practice,...
Reback, Charles
Urban and Regional History
18th Century
19th Century
20th Century: Pre WWII
20th Century: WWII and post-WWII
North America
Jan 10, 2013
Published by EH.Net (January 2013)
Randal L. Hall, Mountains on the Market: Industry, the Environment, and the South. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2012. vii + 288 pp. $40 (cloth), ISBN: 978-0-8131-3624-0.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Charles Reback, College of Business, University of South Carolina Upstate
In Mountains on the Market: Industry, the Environment, and the South, Randal L. Hall provides a nuanced interpretation of 250 years of Southern economic development, adding to the large literature correcting the misconception of the South as a pre-capitalist, slow-moving, agrarian society. Using the New River valley of southwestern Virginia as a microcosm for American...
Guinnane, Timothy W.
Business History
19th Century
20th Century: Pre WWII
20th Century: WWII and post-WWII
Europe
Jan 8, 2013
Published by EH.Net (January 2013)
Harold James, Krupp: A History of the Legendary German Firm. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012. vii + 360 pp. $35 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-691-15340-7.
Reviewed by for EH.Net by Timothy W. Guinnane, Department of Economics, Yale University.
Harold James’ subtitle places this work in the genre of business history, but it is also the story of one of the most important families in modern German history. Any good history of the Krupp family has to be a history of the Krupp firm and vice versa. One can argue that the firm’s success depended on the personalities of individual family members, as well as successful dynastic politics. At the same time,...
Hall, Randal L.
Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Extractive Industries
19th Century
20th Century: Pre WWII
North America
Jan 2, 2013
Published by EH.Net (January 2013)
James C. Giesen, Boll Weevil Blues: Cotton, Myth, and Power in the American South. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. xvi + 221 pp. $40 (hardcover), ISBN 978-0-226-29287-8.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Randal L. Hall, Department of History, Rice University.
James C. Giesen, an associate professor of history at Mississippi State University, has completed a challenging task in Boll Weevil Blues: Cotton, Myth, and Power in the American South. He has written the first monograph on the boll weevil in the U.S. South, and he succeeds in exploring this long-snouted insect’s effects on both the economy and the culture of the region from the 1890s to about 1930.
...
Wishart, David M.
Government, Law and Regulation, Public Finance
18th Century
19th Century
North America
Dec 31, 2012
Published by EH.Net (December 2012)
Blake A. Watson, Buying America from the Indians: Johnson v. McIntosh and the History of Native Land Rights. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012. xvi + 494 pp. $45 (cloth), ISBN: 978-0-8061-4244-9.
Reviewed for EH.Net by David M. Wishart, Department of Economics, Wittenberg University.
Blake Watson, formerly an attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, and currently a Professor of Law at the University of Dayton, has written an erudite and provocative history of land sales by the Illinois and Piankeshaw Indians in 1773 and 1775 that encompassed large of portions of present-day central and southern Indiana and Illinois to land speculators...
Garcia-Swartz, Daniel D.
Business History
History of Technology, including Technological Change
20th Century: Pre WWII
20th Century: WWII and post-WWII
General, International, or Comparative
Dec 21, 2012
Published by EH.Net (December 2012)
James W. Cortada, The Digital Flood: The Diffusion of Information Technology across the U.S., Europe, and Asia. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. xix + 789 pp. $99 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-19-992155-3.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Daniel D. Garcia-Swartz, Compass Lexecon.
In The Digital Flood, James Cortada, the author of two dozen books on the history and management of information technologies, undertakes an incredibly ambitious project: to analyze the international diffusion and deployment of IT from the 1940s through the late 1990s. The project is mind-boggling not only because of its geographical scope – the book has chapters on the U.S.,...
Logan, Trevon D.
Historical Demography, including Migration
General or Comparative
General, International, or Comparative
Dec 20, 2012
Published by EH.Net (December 2012)
Louis P. Cain and Donald G. Paterson, The Children of Eve: Population and Well-being in History. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. xix + 391 pp. $60 (paperback), ISBN: 978-1-4443-3690-0.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Trevon D. Logan, Department of Economics, Ohio State University.
Louis Cain of Loyola University Chicago and Donald Paterson of the University of British Columbia have an ambitious agenda, to tell the population and health histories of the world in one volume. Along the way they cover a great deal of health, medicine, economics and anthropology in describing how homo sapiens managed to grow in number, average size, and longevity over the last several...