Inspired by Vincent Geloso, here is a list of the 25 books in economic history published since 2000 which I have found most stimulating or provocative. Not the best, nor the most ‘correct’, nor the most balanced, but those things which influenced, stimulated, or provoked my own personal thinking.
- Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective
- Clark, A Farewell to Alms
- Clark, The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility
- De Vries, The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Culture and the Household Economy, 1650-present
- Engerman & Sokoloff, Economic Development in the Americas since 1500
- Federico, Feeding the World: An Economic History of Agriculture, 1800-2000
- Findlay & O’Rourke, Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium
- Galor, Unified Growth Theory
- Gat, War in Human Civilization
- Greif, Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade
- Kuran, The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East
- Lee & Feng, One Quarter of Humanity: Malthusian Mythology and Chinese Realities, 1700-2000
- Lieberman, Strange Parallels (2 volumes)
- Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850 (Edit: late addition: Mokyr, Gifts of Athena: The Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy)
- Mitterauer, Why Europe? The Medieval Origins of its Special Path
- North, Wallis & Weingast, Violence & Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History
- O’Rourke & Williamson, Globalization and History: The Evolution of a Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Economy
- Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy
- Seabright, The Company of Strangers: The Natural History of Economic Life
- Smil, Vaclav (several, but especially Creating the Twentieth Century: Technical Innovations of 1867-1914 and Their Lasting Impact)
- Temin, The Roman Market Economy
- Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy
- Turchin & Nefedov, Secular Cycles
- Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization
- Williamson, Trade and Poverty: How the Third World Fell Behind
Some of these also appear on my bigger Economic History Books page, which is intended to be a list of survey & reference books for the economic history of particular regions or countries.
No Gifts of Athena??!!
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Well, I wavered between GoA and TEE. But I could have just as easily put GoA.
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You should take a look at Accidental India – A History of the Nation’s Passage through Crisis and Change (http://amzn.to/1A1OfJQ) published in 2012. The premise – every major transformation in its 70 years of Independence came in the wake of crises.
India, is already in the top five, has overtaken Britain in nominal terms. On PPP terms, says PWC, will be the second largest economy. How did the nation on the brink of penury come to represent the promise of prosperity?
Check it out
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I would add also Tomas Sedlacek: Economics of Good and Evil: The Quest for Economic Meaning from Gilgamesh to Wall Street
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Understanding the listing is those most stimulating economic history books to your person still I (no economist am I) would squeeze in The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It.
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“Lee & Feng, One Quarter of Humanity: Malthusian Mythology and Chinese Realities, 1700-2000” – I’m interested about your thoughts on this book and how it has effected your thinking, since you’ve also listed (and blogged about!) Clark’s neo-Malthusian A Farewell to Alms (I have read the latter but not the former).
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