The best books on economic history and testing assumptions

I read this book after I wrote Petrarch’s War, it was recommended to me by an economist. I felt like Taleb was speaking to me directly. It is clearly written and emphasized the role of Black Swan events in moving history and events along. As a professional historian, and especially an economic historian, I found his argument very compelling—and this was before COVID 19, the ultimate Black Swan. Taleb rails—in often humorous but always intelligent ways- about the limits of predicting events based on the past, and how the human mind is set up to do just that, but the reality is invariably far different. A powerful message.

I recommend this book because it speaks to the importance of “embeddedness” as an economic concept: how one can only understand economic phenomena in their context. It exposes the limits of classical economics and explodes the myth of the (unfortunately) still very much accepted notion of the evolutionary nature of “free markets.” Polanyi isolates the phenomenon to a specific historical moment, which helped lead to fascism. I look at the world today and think of Polanyi.

It is a novel and a prolonged non-sequitur about life and worldly existence that speaks to me both as a person and as a professional. I read it in college and was astounded by the psychological depth and whimsy. “A cock and bull story, but one of the best…I have ever heard.” I think of that line from Sterne when I write my own work or read others; 

The book is, like the others I have recommended, decidedly distinctive and untraditional. It traces the convoluted history of capitalist thought prior to its advent (which is itself the subject of ceaseless debate). Reducing forces to “passion” and “order” made me look at a complicated subject in a new way.

The book is by an eminent Economists and is highly influential, answering the big question that all economic historians encounter—why did the West move to industrialize before the East. The book is unapologetically Euro-centric (as using the terms East and West suggests) and while I disagree with the thesis and the presentation of “facts” (a typical historian versus economist problem), I admire the clarity and forceful “I don’t care this is what happened” aspect. One can admire the forcefulness and intelligence of those they fundamentally disagree with.