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Economic and Business History
South Asian Studies March 24, 2023

Merchants of Virtue

Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia

Divya Cherian

Hosted by Sanjukta Poddar
Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia (U California Press, 2023) explores the question of what it meant to be Hindu in precolonial South Asia. Divya …

Economic and Business History

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Interviews with scholars of economic and business history about their new books.

Asian Review of Books March 23, 2023

Money Machine

A Trailblazing American Venture in China

Weijian Shan

Hosted by Nicholas Gordon
In 2010, Ping An took over Shenzhen Development Bank, ending an experiment that had never been tried before, and not been tried since: a foreign company owning and managing a …
Irish Studies March 20, 2023

Land and Liberalism

Henry George and the Irish Land War

Andrew Phemister

Hosted by Aidan Beatty
Andrew Phemister is Research Associate at Newcastle University. He has previously held postdoctoral positions in History at NUI Galway, the University of Oxford, and Edinburgh’s Institute for Advanced Studies in …
Chinese Studies March 19, 2023

China and Latin America

Development, Agency and Geopolitics

Chris Alden and Alvaro Mendez

Hosted by Miranda Melcher
China's role as an economic powerhouse in Latin America is reshaping a region on the cusp of development and change. Since the turn of the century, bilateral trade between China …
Economics March 19, 2023

From China's Lost Generation to American Private Equity Professor

A Discussion with Weijian Shan

Weijian Shan

Hosted by Keith Krueger
Having lived through both China’s Great Leap Forward during primary school, then the Cultural Revolution and the closing of schools for ten years, Beijing-born Weijian Shan, instead of a secondary …
Economic and Business History March 18, 2023

Pioneers of Capitalism

The Netherlands 1000–1800

Maarten Prak and Jan Luiten van Zanden

Hosted by Javier Mejia
During the Middle Ages, the Netherlands played a significant role in the emergence of capitalism, which led to the impressive Dutch Golden Age and paved the way for long-term economic …
American West March 16, 2023

A People's History of SFO

The Making of the Bay Area and an Airport

Eric Porter

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
What can an airport tell us about a city? Quite a bit, according to UC-Santa Cruz history professor Eric Porter in A People's History of SFO: The Making of the Bay Area and …
Sociology March 15, 2023

A Good Place to Do Business

The Politics of Downtown Renewal Since 1945

Roger Biles and Mark H. Rose

Hosted by Nicole Trujillo-Pagan
The “Pittsburgh Renaissance,” an urban renewal effort launched in the late 1940s, transformed the smoky rust belt city’s downtown. Working-class residents and people of color saw their neighborhoods cleared and …
Economics March 15, 2023

Lives Amid Violence

Transforming Development in the Wake of Conflict

Mareike Schomerus

Hosted by Miranda Melcher
Violent conflict and its aftermath are pressing problems, particularly for international development initiatives. However, the results of development in conflict contexts have generally been disappointing and their preventative potential thus …
Early Modern History March 14, 2023

Fictions of Credit in the Age of Shakespeare

Laura Kolb

Hosted by Zalman Newfield
In Fictions of Credit in the Age of Shakespeare (Oxford University Press, 2021), Laura Kolb examines how Shakespeare and his contemporaries represented credit-driven artifice and interpretation on the early modern …
Economic and Business History March 12, 2023

Birth of Modern Facts

How the Information Revolution Transformed Academic Research, Governments and Businesses

James W. Cortada

Hosted by Bernardo Batiz-Lazo
For over twenty years, James W. Cortada has pioneered research into how information shapes society. In Birth of Modern Facts: How the Information Revolution Transformed Academic Research, Governments and Businesses …
Sports March 11, 2023

Black Ball

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation That Saved the Soul of the NBA

Theresa Runstedtler

Hosted by Paul Knepper
Against a backdrop of ongoing resistance to racial desegregation and strident calls for Black Power, the NBA in the 1970s embodied the nation’s imagined descent into disorder. A new generation …
Latin American Studies March 11, 2023

Abandoning Their Beloved Land

The Politics of Bracero Migration in Mexico

Alberto García

Hosted by Rachel Newman
Abandoning Their Beloved Land: The Politics of Bracero Migration in Mexico (U California Press, 2023) offers an essential new history of the Bracero Program, a bilateral initiative that allowed Mexican …
American Studies March 10, 2023

Hollywood's Embassies

How Movie Theaters Projected American Power Around the World

Ross Melnick

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
Beginning in the 1920s, audiences around the globe were seduced not only by Hollywood films but also by lavish movie theaters that were owned and operated by the major American …
Recall This Book March 9, 2023

Chris Walley on Deindustrialization (EF, JP)

Christine J. Walley

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
On a blustery fall morning back in 2019, RTB welcomed Christine Walley, anthropologist and author of Exit Zero: Family and Class in Postindustrial Chicago. In the early 1980s Chris’s father …
Asian Review of Books March 9, 2023

The King’s Road

Diplomacy and the Remaking of the Silk Road

Xin Wen

Hosted by Nicholas Gordon
Many of us–who maybe aren’t historians–have an image of the Silk Road: merchants who carried silk from China to as far as ancient Rome, in one of the first global …
The Future of . . . with Owen Bennett-Jones March 7, 2023

The Silk Road

Connecting Histories and Futures

Tim Winter

Hosted by Owen Bennett-Jones
The term "Silk Road" evokes images of trade and exotic luxurious goods and Orientalist images. Today, however, it also is associated with the projection of Chinese power abroad. And as that …
Sociology March 6, 2023

The Perfect Fit

Creative Work in the Global Shoe Industry

Claudio E. Benzecry

Hosted by Jun Fang
The Perfect Fit: Creative Work in the Global Shoe Industry (The University of Chicago Press, 2022) shows us how globalization works through the many people and places involved in making women’s shoes.We know a …
Caribbean Studies March 6, 2023

The Silver Women

How Black Women's Labor Made the Panama Canal

Joan Flores-Villalobos

Hosted by Nicole Ramsey
In The Silver Women: How Black Women's Labor Made the Panama Canal (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023), Joan Flores-Villalobos argues that Black West Indian women made the canal construction possible by …
South Asian Studies March 5, 2023

Planning Democracy

Modern India's Quest for Development

Nikhil Menon

Hosted by Anubha Anushree
The Indian planning project was one of the postcolonial world's most ambitious experiments. Planning Democracy: Modern India's Quest for Development (Cambridge UP, 2022) explores how India fused Soviet-inspired economic management …