History

In Capitalism and Its Critics, New Yorker writer John Cassidy brings to life the figures who warned of monopoly power, inequality, environmental peril, and authoritarianism—forces still at work today. He discusses his book with Lynn Parramore.

Professor Marc Egnal of York University joins the Institute for New Economic Thinking’s Lynn Parramore to explore why historians cling to an inaccurate and misleading narrative, and what we can learn from the real history about tyranny, checks and balances, imperialism — and resistance.

Fifty years ago the actions of the Federal Reserve mattered. Today, so far as the aggregate measures of the American domestic economy go, they do not.

The key role coal industrialists played in supporting and financing the eventual Nazi triumph

The history of the political relations between Hitler and the NSDAP leadership and the German “coal industrialists” from 1926 to 1933

In a fresh release from INET’s book series with Cambridge University Press, renowned German economic historian Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich uncovers the startling truth behind German currency reform usually hailed as the foundation of the post-war German economic miracle: Ludwig Erhard, who cooperated with the Nazis, unjustly claimed the spotlight, overshadowing the real architect, Edward Tenenbaum.

A new book, The Hamilton Scheme, explores a very different founder than the one we’ve come to think we know.

By 1812 the U.S. already had more business corporations than any other country and possibly more than all other countries combined.

By 1812 the U.S. already had more business corporations than any other country, and possibly more than all other countries put together, securing its role as the world’s first “corporation nation.”

An excerpt from Revolt of the Rich: How the Politics of the 1970s Widened America’s Class Divide by David N. Gibbs, published by Columbia University Press (2024)

Wang Hui, author of The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought, now available in English, provides conceptual guidance for understanding China’s intellectual progress in a conversation with INET’s Lynn Parramore.

Reinterpreting Bagehot’s mature work as the origin of the key currency tradition

Read in the context of his time, Bagehot’s book Lombard Street appears as an attempt above all to reveal the dynamic of globalization when global money was sterling.

Smith did not advocate a single-minded pursuit of profit

Historians Naomi Oreskes (Harvard University) and Erik Conway (Caltech) talk to Rob about their just released book, The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market.