New Books in Economic and Business History
New Books Network
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
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Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com
Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/
Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork
Episodes
Mentioned books
Mar 24, 2026 • 1h 19min
J. S. Nelson, "Business Ethics: What Everyone Needs to Know" (Oxford UP, 2021)
J. S. Nelson, a law professor and business ethics scholar who coauthored the book with Lynn Stout, discusses corporate governance and managerial discretion. He explores how corporations balance shareholders, employees, customers, and communities. Topics include designing systems to channel instincts, disclosure versus hype, private equity versus public firms, and fostering dissent and accountability in organizations.
Mar 23, 2026 • 44min
Steffan Blayney, "Health and Efficiency: Fatigue, the Science of Work, and the Making of the Working-Class Body" (Activist Studies of Science, 2022)
Steffan Blayney, a historian and former Wellcome Trust Research Fellow, explores how late 19th–early 20th century science recast the worker as a machine. He discusses thermodynamic and time-motion models, fatigue reframed as pathology, the spread of efficiency into everyday life, parallels with modern productivity culture, and how workers and unions pushed back against these logics.
Mar 22, 2026 • 46min
Orsi Husz, "Bankminded: Banks As Intimate Agents of Everyday Life in Welfare State Sweden" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2025)
Orsi Husz, Professor at Uppsala University who studies the cultural history of personal finance, explains how banks became woven into everyday Swedish life. She discusses archival discoveries, the welfare state’s role in encouraging household banking, gendered marketing to housewives, the rise of credit cards, and how past bankification connects to today’s digital payments.
12 snips
Mar 22, 2026 • 32min
Elizabeth Mitchell Elder, "Company Towns: Industry Power and the Historical Foundations of Public Mistrust" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
Elizabeth Mitchell Elder, a political scientist who studies public opinion and institutions. She discusses coal’s grip on Appalachia and the Illinois Basin and how company control stunted local government capacity. She describes historical corruption, lasting civic cynicism, and surprising midcentury outmigration. The conversation links place-based histories to modern mistrust of government.
Mar 21, 2026 • 1h 3min
Doug Crandell, "Twenty-Two Cents an Hour: Disability Rights and the Fight to End Subminimum Wages" (Cornell UP, 2022)
Doug Crandell, disability advocate and University of Georgia public service faculty, probes subminimum wages and the politics that sustain them. He contrasts public perception with abusive workplaces, traces legal and historical battles, and discusses advocacy tactics, inclusive employment alternatives, and reasons for cautious optimism.
Mar 20, 2026 • 1h 10min
Paul Kohlbry, "Plots and Deeds: Agrarian Annihilation and the Fight for Land Justice in Palestine" (Stanford UP, 2026)
Paul Kohlbry, Assistant Professor of Global Studies and anthropologist of agrarian life, discusses land as home, property, territory, and homeland. He traces agrarian annihilation in the West Bank, legal and market pressures on peasant farming, ruined land and reclamation projects, property as both tool of conquest and defense, and gendered inheritance and land-for-tillers claims.
Mar 18, 2026 • 44min
Lisa Nakamura, "The Inattention Economy: How Women of Color Built the Internet" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)
Lisa Nakamura, professor and scholar of race, gender, and digital media, recovers the overlooked labor of women of color who made the internet work. She traces three eras from Navajo semiconductor workers to MySpace influencers to Black VR creators. Topics include digital extraction, the invisibility of care work, and calls for recognition and material repair.
Mar 17, 2026 • 1h 2min
Abe Walker, "Reassembling the UAW: Insurgency, Contention, and the Struggle for Unionism in the American South" (Temple UP, 2026)
Abe Walker, assistant professor of sociology and author of Reassembling the UAW, studies labor organizing and the UAW’s Chattanooga campaigns. He traces the decade-long struggle to unionize Volkswagen, reviews strategic failures and the rise of insurgent rank-and-file tactics, and explains how shifts in strategy, scandals, and worker-led mobilization produced a 2024 breakthrough.
Mar 16, 2026 • 44min
Eurie Dahn, "Snack" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
Eurie Dahn, scholar of Black American periodicals and literature and author of Snack (Bloomsbury, 2026). She traces how snacks became mainstream through packaging, corporate tactics, and marketing. Short takes explore Flamin' Hot Cheetos, kid-focused products, immigrant snack cultures, and how snacks carry meanings of pleasure, memory, race, and diet culture.
Mar 16, 2026 • 16min
Entrepreneurial Work Ethic
A deep dive into the rise of the entrepreneurial work ethic and how it replaced older ideas of industriousness. Conversations trace its roots from success literature to business schools and the gig economy. The talk examines who the ethic serves, why bureaucrats are cast as villains, and how the push to “make your own job” reshapes labor and hope.
