I have been studying, writing, and teaching economic history for nearly four decades. I was drawn to the field because it let me combine my passion for understanding how the past and present are connected with my fascination with the insights derived from the natural sciences. When I started studying economic history, the discipline was still relatively new, having grown out of pioneering research in the 1950s and 1960s by a small band of innovative scholars. During my career, I have met many of these intellectual giants personally, and I have watched the discipline of economic history mature and grow in both its methods and intellectual scope.
I wrote...
Quantitative Economic History: The Good of Counting
How do you blend the historian’s eye for detail and attention to facts with the economist’s concern for quantitative evidence and theory to understand the world? The essays collected in this volume illustrate the insightful and creative ways in which scholars working at the juncture between these two disciplines are able to combine their approaches to yield new insights and advance our understanding of the world. The topics addressed range from bastardy in England and Wales, to the effects of refrigeration on the prices of corn and pork. What unifies them is a commitment to blending deep historical understanding with innovative use of quantitative and statistical information.
If you read one book about the history of slavery, this should be it. This brief volume sums up decades of Wright’s scholarship about how the institution of slavery shaped virtually every aspect of American economic development and left a lasting imprint long after Emancipation. It is concise, eye-opening, and insightful. It also offers a broader lesson in the ways in which economic institutions affect aspects of behavior in unanticipated ways.
Through an analysis of slavery as an economic institution, Gavin Wright presents an innovative look at the economic divergence between North and South in the antebellum era. He draws a distinction between slavery as a form of work organisation, the aspect that has dominated historical debates, and slavery as a set of property rights. Slave-based commerce remained central to the eighteenth-century rise of the Atlantic economy, not because slave plantations were superior as a method of organizing production, but because slaves could be put to work on sugar plantations that could not have attracted free labor on economically viable terms.
The British Industrial Revolution is the single most important event in shaping the modern world. Since 1800 the standard of living in Western Industrial nations has increased nearly 40-fold, and in the last half-century, this prosperity has spread more widely. Writing in an engaging style, Clark offers a unique and provocative account of these changes and their causes.
Why are some parts of the world so rich and others so poor? Why did the Industrial Revolution - and the unprecedented economic growth that came with it - occur in eighteenth-century England, and not at some other time, or in some other place? Why didn't industrialization make the whole world rich - and why did it make large parts of the world even poorer? In "A Farewell to Alms", Gregory Clark tackles these profound questions and suggests a new and provocative way in which culture - not exploitation, geography, or resources - explains the wealth, and the poverty, of…
Diamond is not an economist, but he thinks like one. In this book, he looks at civilizations that failed, drawing illuminating and important insights about the ways in which population pressures on resources can result in the collapse and disappearance of civilizations. The tales he tells offer a chilling warning about the need to attend to humankind’s impact on the world around us.
From the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive is a visionary study of the mysterious downfall of past civilizations.
Now in a revised edition with a new afterword, Jared Diamond's Collapse uncovers the secret behind why some societies flourish, while others founder - and what this means for our future.
What happened to the people who made the forlorn long-abandoned statues of Easter Island? What happened to the architects of the crumbling Maya pyramids? Will we go the same way, our skyscrapers one day standing derelict and overgrown like the…
As the subtitle suggests the authors of this book do not have modest ambitions. And for the most part, they deliver. Modern economics focuses mainly on market interactions. But those markets are embedded in institutional and personal networks that are undergirded by the use or threat of use of force. This book provides a framework for understanding how the ability to use force undergirds modern political systems and why that matters.
All societies must deal with the possibility of violence, and they do so in different ways. This book integrates the problem of violence into a larger social science and historical framework, showing how economic and political behavior are closely linked. Most societies, which we call natural states, limit violence by political manipulation of the economy to create privileged interests. These privileges limit the use of violence by powerful individuals, but doing so hinders both economic and political development. In contrast, modern societies create open access to economic and political organizations, fostering political and economic competition. The book provides a framework…
The modern world is defined by the relentless pace of technological change. But what is technology and how in the world does progress occur? Economists often treat the process of innovation as a “black box” out of which new products and processes emerge. Arthur opens the lid of this box and provides an eye-opening set of insights about how things work inside the box, and how that affects the rate and direction of innovation.
“More than anything else technology creates our world. It creates our wealth, our economy, our very way of being,” says W. Brian Arthur. Yet despite technology’s irrefutable importance in our daily lives, until now its major questions have gone unanswered. Where do new technologies come from? What constitutes innovation, and how is it achieved? Does technology, like biological life, evolve? In this groundbreaking work, pioneering technology thinker and economist W. Brian Arthur answers these questions and more, setting forth a boldly original way of thinking about technology.
The Nature of Technology is an elegant and powerful theory of technology’s origins…
As a trauma therapist and dedicated researcher, I love uncovering valuable insights within lesser-known books. There are hidden gems, free from the pressure of commercial success, crafted by authors deeply committed to research, understanding, and the art of writing itself. Their dedication resonates with me, as I believe in the profound value of information and the power of critical thinking. Through my own book, Traumatization and Its Aftermath, I aim to emphasize that psychological concepts often lose their depth in translation and my mission is spreading awareness and fostering a deeper understanding of trauma and its intricate facets. With that idea in mind, I chose these five titles.
A fresh take on the difference between trauma and hardship in order to help accurately spot the difference and avoid over-generalizations.
The book integrates the latest findings in brain science, child development, psycho-social context, theory, and clinical experiences to make the case that trauma is much more than a cluster of symptoms to be tamed, but instead best understood as development gone off course, away from growth and towards (only) survival.
This book prompts a profound shift in perception, inviting to view trauma as an intricate and diverse experience, a point of view that ultimately leads to sharper treatment and, hopefully, more healing. It encourages a transition from asking, "What happened to you?" to the deeper question, "What is your relationship with what happened to you?"
Traumatization and Its Aftermath: A Systemic Approach to Understanding and Treating Trauma Disorders
The book is comprehensive, bold, and practical-a much-needed resource for the assessment and treatment of trauma. Instead of the traditional focus on the overall importance of healing, Traumatization and its Aftermath decodes why some people don't heal as easily as others, analyzes the various failures of diagnosis, and explains how to make therapeutic interventions truly effective.
This book offers a systemic deep dive into traumatization that clarifies myths and misinformation about the entire spectrum of trauma and provides both clinicians and non-clinicians with the right level of validation, preventive measures, conceptualization methodology, assessment tools, and healing facts that have not…
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