New Books in Economic and Business History

Drawing on decades of experience covering the global economy, New York Times' journalist Peter S. Goodman profiles five representative Davos Men-members of the billionaire class-chronicling how their shocking exploitation of the global pandemic has hastened a fifty-year trend of wealth centralization. Alongside this reporting, Goodman delivers textured portraits of those caught in Davos Man's wake, including a former steelworker in the American Midwest, a Bangladeshi migrant in Qatar, a Seattle doctor on the front lines of the fight against COVID, blue-collar workers in the tenements of Buenos Aires, an African immigrant in Sweden, a textile manufacturer in Italy, an Amazon warehouse employee in New York City, and more in his book, Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World (Custom House, 2022).
Peter S. Goodman is the global economic correspondent for The New York Times, based in New York.
Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin).
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The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries marked a pivotal time for the United States as the nation emerged as a political and industrial powerhouse and fashioned its new value system. Amid waves of emigration and evolving cultural exchanges, Italy’s relationship with America became a complex tapestry of admiration, critique, and adaptation.

This study of Italy’s Americanism explores social debates within Italy regarding emigration, the development of a Columbian narrative, European reactions to the Spanish-American War, the impact of American products on Italian society, and former US president Woodrow Wilson’s military intervention and political propaganda during the First World War. It highlights discussions among Italians about the implications of emigration, contrasting prevailing negative views with a counter-narrative from Italian journalists, scholars, and missionaries who visited the United States. The negotiation of US imports and their incorporation into the Italian national context document the formation of a distinct American subculture and the early phases of the nation’s Americanization.

The Rise of Americanism in Italy, 1888-1919 (University of Toronto Press, 2025) provides a unique perspective to assess the early stages of America’s “soft” expansion, as the flow of departing and returning emigrants made Italy a favourable terrain for commercial penetration in Europe, transforming an export ideology into a complex network of transatlantic relations.

Luca Cottini, PhD, is an associate professor of Italian in Villanova University. He is also the creator of the popular Youtube channel, Italian Innovators.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.
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Is environmental degradation an inevitable result of economic development? Can ecosystems be restored once government officials and the public are committed to doing so? These questions are at the heart of Stevan Harrell's An Ecological History of Modern China (University of Washington Press, 2023), a comprehensive account of China's transformation since the founding of the People's Republic from the perspective not of the economy but of the biophysical world. Examples throughout illustrate how agricultural, industrial, and urban development have affected the resilience of China's ecosystems—their ability to withstand disturbances and additional growth—and what this means for the country's future.
Drawing on decades of research, Harrell demonstrates the local and global impacts of China's miraculous rise. In clear and accessible prose, An Ecological History of Modern China untangles the paradoxes of development and questions the possibility of a future that is both prosperous and sustainable. It is a critical resource for students, scholars, and general readers interested in environmental change, Chinese history, and sustainable development.
Stevan Harrell is professor emeritus of anthropology and environmental and forest sciences at the University of Washington. His many books include Ways of Being Ethnic in Southwest China. Twitter. Website.
Brian Hamilton is chair of the Department of History and Social Science at Deerfield Academy. Twitter. Website.
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The Soviet Union was one of the most secretive states that ever existed. Defended by a complex apparatus of rules and checks administered by the secret police, the Soviet state had seemingly unprecedented capabilities based on its near monopoly of productive capital, monolithic authority, and secretive decision making. But behind the scenes, Soviet secrecy was double-edged: it raised transaction costs, incentivized indecision, compromised the effectiveness of government officials, eroded citizens' trust in institutions and in each other, and led to a secretive society and an uninformed elite. The result is what Dr. Mark Harrison in Secret Leviathan: Secrecy and State Capacity under Soviet Communism (Stanford University Press, 2023) calls the secrecy/capacity tradeoff: a bargain in which the Soviet state accepted the reduction of state capacity as the cost of ensuring its own survival.
This book is the first comprehensive, analytical, multi-faceted history of Soviet secrecy in the English language. Dr. Harrison combines quantitative and qualitative evidence to evaluate the impact of secrecy on Soviet state capacity from the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Based on multiple years of research in once-secret Soviet-era archives, this book addresses two gaps in history and social science: one the core role of secrecy in building and stabilising the communist states of the twentieth century; the other the corrosive effects of secrecy on the capabilities of authoritarian states.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
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What happens when states experience a rapid increase in resource wealth? This book examines the significant diamond find in eastern Zimbabwe in 2006, possibly the largest in over 100 years, and its influence on the institutional trajectory of the country. In Zimbabwe's Diamond Trade: The State, Resource Politics and Development (Cambridge UP, 2025) Dr. Nathan Munier examines how this rapid increase in resource production shaped the policies available to political actors, providing a fresh understanding of the perpetuation of ZANU-PF rule and the variation in the trajectory of institutions in Zimbabwe compared to other Southern African states. This study places Zimbabwe amongst the overall population of resource-wealthy countries such as Angola, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa, especially those that experience a significant increase in production. In doing so, Dr. Munier contributes to the understanding of resource politics, political economy, and comparative African politics.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
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