Ekonomisk historia

'A groundbreaking work . . . Federici has become a crucial figure for . . . a new generation of feminists' Rachel Kushner, author of The Mars RoomA cult classic since its publication in the early years of this century, Caliban and the Witch is Silvia Federici's history of the body in the transition to capitalism. Moving from the peasant revolts of the late Middle Ages through the European witch-hunts, the rise of scientific rationalism and the colonisation of the Americas, it gives a panoramic account of the often horrific violence with which the unruly human material of pre-capitalist societies was transformed into a set of predictable and controllable mechanisms. It Is a study of indigenous traditions crushed, of the enclosure of women's reproductive powers within the nuclear family, and of how our modern world was forged in blood.'Rewarding . . . allows us to better understand the intimate relationship between modern patriarchy, the rise of the nation state and the transition from feudalism to capitalism' Guardian

A #1 international bestseller Named a BEST BOOK OF 2025 in The Financial Times, Economist, New Statesman, Bloomberg, TIME, Washington Post and The New York Times One of Barack Obama’s favourite books of 2025'One of the best narrative histories I've read' Wall Street Journal From the bestselling author of Too Big to Fail, “the definitive history of the 2008 banking crisis,”* comes a spellbinding narrative of the most infamous stock market crash in history one with ripple effects that still shape our society todayIn 1929, the world watched in shock as the unstoppable Wall Street bull market went into a freefall, wiping out fortunes and igniting a depression that would reshape a generation. But behind the flashing ticker tapes and panicked traders, another drama unfolded—one of visionaries and fraudsters, titans and dreamers, euphoria and ruin.With unparalleled access to historical records and newly uncovered documents, New York Times bestselling author Andrew Ross Sorkin takes readers inside the chaos of the crash, behind the scenes of a raging battle between Wall Street and Washington and the larger-than-life characters whose ambition and naivety in an endless boom led to wreckage. The dizzying highs and brutal lows of this era eerily mirror today’s world—where markets soar, political tensions mount, and the fight over financial influence plays out once again.This is not just a story about money. 1929 is a tale of power, psychology, and the seductive illusion that “this time is different.” It’s about disregarded alarm bells, financiers who fell from grace, and skeptics who saw the crash coming—only to be dismissed until it was too late.Hailed as a landmark book, Too Big to Fail reimagined how financial crises are told. Now, with 1929, Sorkin delivers an immersive, electrifying account of the most pivotal market collapse of all time—with lessons that remain as urgent as ever. More than just a history, 1929 is a crucial blueprint for understanding the cycles of speculation, the forces that drive financial upheaval, and the warning signs we ignore at our peril.*The Atlantic Monthly

*A New York Times Notable Book * A Financial Times Best Book of the Year'A learned, formidable and vivid story… Readers around the world will study and ponder this monumental work of history, agreeing and arguing with it, all the while affirming its generational importance, for decades to come' The New York Times'Epic… Read this book and you will learn innumerable things you did not previously know culled from places you have never been' Financial TimesA brilliant global narrative that unravels the defining story of the past thousand years 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 organise our politics. Sven Beckert situates the story of capitalism within the largest conceivable geographical and historical framework in this fascinating new book.Capitalism, argues Beckert, was born global. Emerging from merchant communities across Asia, Africa and Europe, capitalism’s radical recasting of economic life rooted itself only gradually. Then it burst onto the world scene, as European states and merchants built a powerful alliance that would propel them across the oceans. This epic drama corresponded at no point to an idealised dream of free markets. All along, state-backed institutions and imperial expansions shaped its dynamics.Capitalism decentres the European perspective, highlighting agency, resistance, innovation and ruthless coercion around the world through to the present with the rise of Asian economies, particularly China. Sven Beckert doesn’t merely add up capitalism’s debits and credits in this monumental book, but allows us to think afresh about the past to help us re-imagine the future.

Succér och skandaler tar dig med på en spännande läsupplevelse genom några av det svenska näringslivets mest händelserika kapitel de senaste 125 åren. Boken behandlar lättsamt och initierat 24 händelser som format näringslivet. Boken riktar sig till intresserade av ekonomi, näringsliv, börs och nutidshistoria, såsom aktieintresserade, yrkesverksamma och studenter inom ekonomi och finans.

From legendary investor Ray Dalio, author of the international bestseller Principles, who has spent half a century studying global economies and markets, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order examines history’s most turbulent economic and political periods to reveal why the times ahead will likely be radically different from those we’ve experienced in our lifetimes - but similar to those that have happened many times before. A few years ago, Ray Dalio noticed a confluence of political and economic conditions he hadn’t encountered before. They included huge debts and zero or near-zero interest rates that led to massive printing of money in the world’s three major reserve currencies; big political and social conflicts within countries, especially the US, due to the largest wealth, political and values disparities in more than 100 years; and the rising of a world power (China) to challenge the existing world power (US) and the existing world order. The last time that this confluence occurred was between 1930 and 1945. This realisation sent Dalio on a search for the repeating patterns and cause/effect relationships underlying all major changes in wealth and power over the last 500 years.In this remarkable and timely addition to his Principles series, Dalio brings readers along for his study of the major empires - including the Dutch, the British and the American - putting into perspective the 'Big Cycle' that has driven the successes and failures of all the world’s major countries throughout history.Dalio reveals the timeless and universal forces behind these shifts and uses them to look into the future, offering practical principles for positioning oneself for what’s ahead.

AN ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR'A compelling and timely study of what drove history's most influential civilisations... the book comes with impeccable timing... An entertaining and informative read for anyone interested in the forces that shape how civilisations progress' Financial Times'Deftly punctures popular misconceptions... Could a history book be more timely?' The Economist'Engaging and persuasive' New Statesman'The best book I have read this year' Jeremy HuntGolden ages are marked by periods of spectacular cultural flourishing, scientific exploration, technological achievement and economic growth: Ancient Greece gave us democracy and the rule of the law; out of Abbasid Baghdad came algebra and modern medicine, and the Dutch Republic furnished us with Europe's greatest artistic movements. As such, each has unique lessons to teach us about the world we live in today. But, all previous golden ages have proven finite, whether through external pressures or internal fracturing.In Peak Human, acclaimed historian Johan Norberg examines seven of humanity's greatest civilizations - ancient Athens, the Roman Republic, Abbasid Baghdad, Song China, Renaissance Italy, the Dutch Republic and the Anglosphere - and asks: how do we ensure that our current golden age doesn't end?

The New York Times bestseller, Financial Times and Sunday Times Book of the YearShortlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the YearThe book we need to understand China today: a riveting, first-hand account of its seismic progress from an indispensable expert voice For close to a decade, Dan Wang has been observing China’s tumultuous and astounding growth. The state has constructed towering bridges, gleaming railways and sprawling factories to improve economic outcomes in record time. But rapid change has also sent ripples of pain throughout society.China has grown so quickly in part by beating America at its own game: capitalism and harnessing the restless energy of a vast population. Here Wang blends political and economic analysis with reportage into a provocative new framework for understanding China – one that helps us see America more clearly, too. Whereas China is an engineering state, relentlessly building big, the United States has transformed into a lawyerly society, stalling every attempt to make change, both good and bad.As relations between the US and China are tense and uncertain and the potential for dreadful conflict looms, Wang offers an inventive new way of thinking about the two superpowers. Breakneck reveals that each country points towards a better path for the other. How much better the world would be, he argues, if Americans could live in a society not only governed by lawyers, and Chinese citizens could live with a state that values their individual liberties.‘An illuminating account of China’s dizzying rise and its deepening pathologies’ Chris Miller 'One of the best books published on China this year' The Times

A 2,500-year history of international currencies that reveals new insights about the future of the U.S. dollar—as well as crypto and central bank digital currenciesDoubts about the international dominance of the dollar are only growing amid worries about tariffs, political dysfunction, and fraying international alliances. Will the dollar continue to reign supreme? In Money Beyond Borders, the leading authority on international currencies, Barry Eichengreen, puts the dollar’s prospects in deep historical perspective by chronicling the entire history of cross-border currencies, from the invention of coins in the seventh century BCE to the cryptocurrencies of today and the central bank digital currencies of tomorrow.Money Beyond Borders recounts how Greek and Roman coins became the first true international currencies. It tells how the Florentine gold florin became the “greenback of the Renaissance,” and how it was succeeded by Spanish silver and a Dutch fiat currency. The book explains why the British pound dominated the international economy in the nineteenth century, why the dollar rose to the top during World War II, and why the dollar has survived predictions of the imminent loss of its preeminence since the 1970s.The long history of international currencies shows that the same factors that encourage their widespread use eventually lead to their abandonment. Money Beyond Borders makes a powerful case that the dollar is now on the downside of this cycle, and it considers who the winners and losers will be when there is flight away from the greenback. Revealing important patterns in the life cycles of international currencies over the past 2,500 years, the book offers valuable lessons and insights about how currencies rise—and why they fall.

In this fully revised fourth edition, this book treats globalization from several vantage points, showing how these help grasp the nature of globalization both in the past and today.The revisions include greater attention to the complications of racism (after 1500) and nationalism (after 1850); further analysis of reactions against globalization after World War I and in the 21st century; more discussion of student exchanges; and fuller treatment of developments since 2008, including the role of the Covid-19 pandemic in contemporary globalization.Four major chronological phases are explored: in the centuries after 1000 CE, after 1500, after 1850, and since the mid-20th century. Discussion of each phase includes relevant debates over the nature and extent of the innovations involved, particularly in terms of transportation/communications technologies and trade patterns. The phase approach also facilitates analysis of the range of interactions enmeshed in globalization, beyond trade and migration, including disease exchange, impacts on culture and consumer tastes, and for the modern periods policy coordination and international organizations. Finally, the book deals with different regional positions and reactions in each of the major phases. This includes not only imbalances of power and economic benefit but also regional styles in dealing with the range of global relationships.This volume is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of world history, economic history, and political economy.

Handel bygger på frivilliga överenskommelser mellan köpare och säljare och gynnar normalt båda parter. En fungerande handel är inte bara betydelsefull för individen utan också för samhället som helhet.I Den svenska handelns historia skildras den nationella och internationella varuhandelns utveckling i Sverige. Vi möter bodknoddar och månglerskor, handelssnillen och e-handlare. Samt en och annan kulturyttring som hämtat inspiration från handeln.Författaren Anders Johnson har tidigare skrivit flera böcker som berör olika delar av svensk handel. Här tar han ett samlat grepp om hela den svenska handelshistorien – från forntid till nutid.

For decades, David Harvey has been teaching Marx's work, particularly Capital, to great acclaim. He has analysed chapter by chapter - sometimes line-by-line - Marx's three volumes and the Grundrisse. This new book opens up the mental universe of that work for a general reader. In The Story of Capital, Harvey takes a synoptic approach to the conceptual architecture as a whole and guides us through the key moments, from labour and technology to the state and geopolitics, via the profit rate, social reproduction, the relationship to nature, fictitious capital and the return of the rentiers. In doing so, Harvey has produced a work which will become a key reference for all those trying to grasp the nature of contemporary capitalism.

Shortlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year AwardHow 1,000 years of global history show why technological and economic progress is often followed by stagnation and even collapseIn How Progress Ends, Carl Benedikt Frey challenges the conventional belief that economic and technological progress is inevitable. For most of human history, stagnation was the norm, and even today progress and prosperity in the world’s largest, most advanced economies—the United States and China—have fallen short of expectations. To appreciate why we cannot depend on any AI-fueled great leap forward, Frey offers a remarkable and fascinating journey across the globe, spanning the past 1,000 years, to explain why some societies flourish and others fail in the wake of rapid technological change.By examining key historical moments—from the rise of the steam engine to the dawn of AI—Frey shows why technological shifts have shaped, and sometimes destabilized, entire civilizations. He explores why some leading technological powers of the past—such as Song China, the Dutch Republic, and Victorian Britain—ultimately lost their innovative edge, why some modern nations such as Japan had periods of rapid growth followed by stagnation, and why planned economies like the Soviet Union collapsed after brief surges of progress. Frey uncovers a recurring tension in history: while decentralization fosters the exploration of new technologies, bureaucracy is crucial for scaling them. When institutions fail to adapt to technological change, stagnation inevitably follows. Only by carefully balancing decentralization and bureaucracy can nations innovate and grow over the long term—findings that have worrying implications for the United States, Europe, China, and other economies today.Through a rich narrative that weaves together history, economics, and technology, How Progress Ends reveals that managing the future requires us to draw the right lessons from the past.

A new history of the idea of Europe from Ancient Greece to the present'A magisterial history, written with great panache, that is both enlightening and deeply readable. A true tour de force - Peter Frankopan What do we talk about when we talk about Europe? Is it defined by geography? Or is it politics, or shared culture? In Europe, award-winning historian Roderick Beaton tells the story of Europe as never before - as the history of an idea, and a collective identity. Since its dramatic birth in ancient Greece, 'Europe' has been defined, and redefined, by its people. Through this powerful lens, and with the narrative drive and scope of a novelist, Beaton deftly surveys Europe’s major historical developments: the rise and fall of Rome; the explosion of Christianity; the intellectual ferment of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment; the arrival of Europeans in the Americas; the violent upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and the uncertainties of the present. Throughout, original sources allow the voices of the past, from Tacitus to Thatcher, to speak for themselves.Grappling with the multilayered identities that have always come with being European, Europe places the Europe of today in a long arc of history stretching back more than 2,500 years.

**A Sunday Times Bestseller****An Economist Best Book of the Year**The celebrated historian and journalist uncovers the networks trying to destroy the democratic worldAll of us have in our minds a cartoon image of what an autocratic state looks like, with a bad man at the top. But in the 21st century, that cartoon bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are run not by one bad guy, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, security services and professional propagandists. The members of these networks are connected not only within a given country, but among many countries. The corrupt, state-controlled companies in one dictatorship do business with corrupt, state-controlled companies in another. The police in one country can arm, equip, and train the police in another. The propagandists share resources—the troll farms that promote one dictator’s propaganda can also be used to promote the propaganda of another—and themes, pounding home the same messages about the weakness of democracy and the evil of America.Unlike military or political alliances from other times and places, this group doesn’t operate like a bloc, but rather like an agglomeration of companies: Autocracy, Inc. Their relations are not based on values, but are rather transactional, which is why they operate so easily across ideological, geographical, and cultural lines. In truth, they are in full agreement about only one thing: Their dislike of us, the inhabitants of the democratic world, and their desire to see both our political systems and our values undermine.That shared understanding of the world—where it comes from, why it lasts, how it works, how the democratic world has unwittingly helped to consolidate it, and how we can help bring it down—is the subject of this book.

Människan har genom alla tider resonerat kring ekonomiska fenomen. Denna bok spårar fram­växten av ett ekonomiskt tänkande genom historien, från dess tidigaste rötter i filosofi, juridik och teologi. Vi lär känna några av ämnets mest namn­kunniga representanter – som Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus och John Maynard Keynes – men även mindre upp­märk­sam­made tänkare som Ibn Khaldun, Henry Thornton och Joan Robinson.I en värld där resurser är begränsade uppstår alltid ­frågor om pengar, marknader, priser och produktion. Men förståelsen av dessa frågor har varierat över tid. Ett centralt tema är därför betydelsen av idéernas ­histo­riska sammanhang. På ett tillgängligt sätt ger boken en vision av det ekonomiska tänkandets framväxt, från Kina och antiken fram till idag. Sålunda berörs äldre tänkande inom områden som islam och kristendom, men ­också mer moderna idéer om socialism, välfärd och spelteori. En ansats har gjorts för att täcka in alternativa skolbildningar som ekonomisk sociologi, postkeynesianism och feministisk ekonomi.

To say that history's greatest economic experiment--Soviet communism--was also its greatest economic failure is to say what many consider obvious. Here, in a startling reinterpretation, Robert Allen argues that the USSR was one of the most successful developing economies of the twentieth century. He reaches this provocative conclusion by recalculating national consumption and using economic, demographic, and computer simulation models to address the "what if" questions central to Soviet history. Moreover, by comparing Soviet performance not only with advanced but with less developed countries, he provides a meaningful context for its evaluation. Although the Russian economy began to develop in the late nineteenth century based on wheat exports, modern economic growth proved elusive. But growth was rapid from 1928 to the 1970s--due to successful Five Year Plans. Notwithstanding the horrors of Stalinism, the building of heavy industry accelerated growth during the 1930s and raised living standards, especially for the many peasants who moved to cities. A sudden drop in fertility due to the education of women and their employment outside the home also facilitated growth.While highlighting the previously underemphasized achievements of Soviet planning, Farm to Factory also shows, through methodical analysis set in fluid prose, that Stalin's worst excesses--such as the bloody collectivization of agriculture--did little to spur growth. Economic development stagnated after 1970, as vital resources were diverted to the military and as a Soviet leadership lacking in original thought pursued wasteful investments.

*The #1 Sunday Times bestseller*'Explosive and beautifully told … these truths can set us free' - Danny Dorling'This book is dynamite – shining a spotlight on the evils of neoliberalism, shattering the myth that ‘there is no alternative’, and laying the foundations for a new politics' - Caroline LucasHow can you fight something if you don’t know it exists?We live under an ideology that preys on every aspect of our lives: our education and our jobs; our healthcare and our leisure; our relationships and our mental wellbeing; the planet we inhabit – the very air we breathe. So pervasive has it become that, for most people, it has no name. It seems unavoidable, like a natural law.But trace it back to its roots, and we discover that it is neither inevitable nor immutable. It was conceived, propagated, and then concealed by the powerful few. Our task is to bring it into the light—and to build a new system that is worth fighting for.Neoliberalism. Do you know what it is?

Faced with a new crisis of capitalism, many scholars are now looking back to the author whose ideas were too hastily dismissed after the fall of the Berlin Wall. During the last decade, Marx’s Capital has received renewed academic and popular attention. It has been reprinted in new editions throughout the world and the contemporary relevance of its pages is being discussed again. Today, Marx’s analyses are arguably resonating even more strongly than they did in his own time and Capital continues to provide an effective framework to understand the nature of capitalism and its transformations. This volume includes the proceedings of the biggest international conference held in the world to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Capital’s publication. The book is divided into three parts: I) "Capitalism, Past and Present"; II) "Extending the Critique of Capital"; III) "The Politics of Capital". It contains the contributions of globally renowned scholars from 13 countries and multiple academic disciplines who offer diverse perspectives, and critical insights into the principal contradictions of contemporary capitalism while pointing to alternative economic and social models. Together, they reconsider the most influential historical debates on Capital and provide new interpretations of Marx’s magnum opus in light of themes rarely associated with Capital, such as gender, ecology, and non-European societies. The book is an indispensable source for academic communities who are increasingly interested in rediscovering Marx beyond 20th century Marxism. Moreover, it will be of great appeal to students, as well as established scholars interested in critique of capitalism and socialist theory.

What if the poverty, inequality,and instability in modern life are not historical accidents, but thepredictable results of a single act of fraud committed five thousand years agothat has never been fixed? This is the argument made by economist and forecasterFred Harrison. By the time you finish reading, it's hard to disagree.The fraud is elegant in itssimplicity. When people live and work together, they create a surplus — a netincome that belongs to no individual, arising from the community, shared land,and nature. Economists call it rent. For most of human prehistory, communitiesshared this surplus for the common good. Then, with the rise of agriculture andsettled civilisations, chiefs and priests realised they could take rent forthemselves. They did, leading to everything that followed: slavery, empires,the cyclical collapse of societies, and the deep poverty that coexists withgreat wealth — all stemming from that original betrayal.This is not a book about ancienthistory; it's about today. Harrison shows that the fraud still exists in thefinancial systems of every modern state. Governments tax wages and businesses —activities that create wealth — while allowing the value of land and naturalresources to remain in private hands. The result is an economy permanentlytilted against working people, a property market that inflates in regulareighteen-year boom-and-bust cycles (Harrison predicted the 2008 crash years inadvance and identifies 2028 as the next), and severe spatial inequality wherethe gap in healthy life expectancy between the wealthiest and poorest areas ofBritain stretches to eighteen years — determined not by individual choices, butby where the rent flows.The human cost is staggering. InScotland, communities whose land was taken over centuries now face the highestdrug death rate in Europe. In places like Blackpool, life is noticeably shorterand harder than in wealthy London boroughs. Harrison estimates 125,000 peoplein Britain die from preventable causes every year as a direct consequence offiscal choices that could change. These are not distant statistics; theyrepresent neighbours, parents, and children.What makes this book sounsettling is its parallel story of how the fraud became invisible. Harrisonexplains how economists and policymakers who had identified the problem weresidelined or absorbed into a professional culture that removed rent from itsdiscussions — producing a discipline able to debate inequality at great length,yet never quite pinpointing its cause.But history is speeding up. Fiveurgent crises are now converging: political deadlock, ecological collapse, massdisplacement, rising authoritarianism, and the newest and most alarming —artificial intelligence trained on a civilisation's worth of data, all shapedby a culture of cheating. An AI that adopts humanity's current values may seeno reason to keep humanity around.Harrison's solution, One WorldRent, is as ambitious as the diagnosis. He proposes replacing taxes on wageswith charges on the rental value of land and natural resources. Sharing rentsacross borders makes cooperation more profitable than conflict. Pooling globalrents could fund the transition to a sustainable climate. The boom-bust cyclewould vanish. Working people would be freed from fiscal punishment. Theinequalities quietly harming people in post-industrial towns could finallybegin to shrink.Rigorous, compassionate, andfuelled by a controlled fury at what has been allowed to persist for so long,Cheating — The Human Project and Its Betrayal is one of the most ambitiousworks of political economy in a generation — a clear explanation of why theworld is as it is, and a strong case that it doesn't have to remain this way.The Human Project faced betrayalonce. The question this book poses is whether we will allow it to be betrayedagain.

Bruken har en självklar plats i svensk historieskrivning, ofta med entreprenörerna, brukspatronerna, i centrum. Här breddas perspektivet till bruksfolk och bönder, till vardagsliv i boställen och uthus, till det krävande arbetet med malmbrytning, i gruvhål och hammarsmedja.

‘Essential reading’ Rory Sutherland, author of Alchemy‘Possibly the best-timed book ever’ Merryn Somerset Webb, Bloomberg Gold (noun): A precious, yellow metal, prized for its beauty. Inert, immune to corrosion, highly malleable though with little utility. Seen as pure wealth. The definitive biography of the metal that has shaped our world – and may yet determine its fate.The Secret History of Gold tells the epic tale of the world’s oldest, and most treasured, currency. From its origins in the formation of the solar system to its pivotal role in both ancient myth and modern finance, Dominic Frisby explores, with wit and brevity, how gold has defined the entire course of human civilisation.Gold has inspired men to do the most brilliant – and terrible – things. The most stolen metal in history, it has lured explorers, conquerors and thieves. It has sparked wars, it has built empires, it has empowered leaders – from Alexander the Great to Adolf Hitler – good and bad. As nations today such as China and Russia mine and hoard gold at record rates, Frisby examines its enduring significance in the digital age and its potential to influence global peace and power.This is the untold story of gold: its past, its present and its future. ‘A fabulous, fascinating, fantastical tale’ Matt Ridley, author of How Innovation Works‘Well-researched and razor-sharp’ Al Murray, comedian and historian

Hayek Book Prize FinalistAn Economist Best Book of the YearA Foreign Affairs Best Book of the YearA Financial Times Summer Reading Favorite“Sweeping, authoritative and—for the times—strikingly upbeat…The overall argument is compelling and…it carries a trace of Schumpeterian subversion.”—The Economist“[An] important book…Lucid, empirically grounded, wide-ranging, and well-argued.”—Martin Wolf, Financial Times“Offers…much needed insight into the sources of economic growth and the kinds of policies that will promote it…All in Washington would do well to read this volume carefully.”—Milton Ezrati, ForbesInequality is on the rise, growth stagnant, the environment in crisis. Covid seems to have exposed every crack in the system. We hear calls for radical change, but the answer is not to junk our economic system but to create a better form of capitalism.An ambitious reappraisal of the foundations of economic success that shows a fair and prosperous future is ours to make, The Power of Creative Destruction draws on cutting-edge theory and hard evidence to examine today’s most fundamental economic questions: what powers growth, competition, globalization, and middle-income traps; the roots of inequality and climate change; the impact of technology; and how to recover from economic shocks. We owe our modern standard of living to innovations enabled by free-market capitalism, it argues, but we also need state intervention—with checks and balances—to foster economic creativity, manage social disruption, and ensure that yesterday’s superstar innovators don’t pull the ladder up after them.

Few single events have affected business and society in the US so profoundly, and in such a short time. There have also been few books that address both these elements of the crash together, and very little published on the subject in the past decade. In this book, a gifted narrative historian with extensive background in the history of business and finance will put into perspective the many conflicting theories of what caused the crash, what role speculation did or did not play, whether or not it could have been avoided, and what role it played in bringing on the depression.The crash itself will be the climax of the narrative. Most of the book will concentrate on the decade before the crash, outlining the heavy bull market, and describing an era of unprecedented technological development, optimism, and expanding wealth. This decade saw the burgeoning of mass society and a popular culture driven by media and advertising, and a heady free market marked by unregulated banking and credit systems, and get-rich-quick schemes. Klein argues that the stock market crash marked a turning point in American history where the failure of self-regulating individualism led to an overhaul of the financial system and much more government regulation. It threw into question the beliefs in the American dream spawned by the 20s and preceded a preiod of deep depression, not only economically, but in regard to the most fundamental American values. The narrative will use a variety of people, developments, and events to illuminate these themes: Jack Morgan, Richard Whitney, Joseph Kennedy, Charles Mitchell, Herbert Hoover, John J. Raskob, and Alexander J. Noyes.

For most of the vast span of human history, economic growth was all but nonexistent. Then, about two centuries ago, some nations began to emerge from this epoch of economic stagnation, experiencing sustained economic growth that led to significant increases in standards of living and profoundly altered the level and distribution of wealth, population, education, and health across the globe. The question ever since has been--why? This is the first book to put forward a unified theory of economic growth that accounts for the entire growth process, from the dawn of civilization to today. Oded Galor, who founded the field of unified growth theory, identifies the historical and prehistorical forces behind the differential transition timing from stagnation to growth and the emergence of income disparity around the world.Galor shows how the interaction between technological progress and population ultimately raised the importance of education in coping with the rapidly changing technological environment, brought about significant reduction in fertility rates, and enabled some economies to devote greater resources toward a steady increase in per capita income, paving the way for sustained economic growth. * Presents a unified theory of economic growth from the dawn of civilization to today * Explains the worldwide disparities in living standards and population we see today * Provides a comprehensive overview of the three phases of the development process * Analyzes the Malthusian theory and its empirical support * Examines theories of demographic transition and their empirical significance * Explores the interaction between economic development and human evolution