New Books in Economic and Business History

Ed Freeman’s influential ideas on stakeholder theory, business ethics, humanities, and capitalism became foundational in the management field and turned around the mainstream thinking about business. Stakeholder theory developed by Freeman and others posits that business is not as much about profits, but rather about creating value for its stakeholders, including employees, customers, communities, financiers, and suppliers. The relationship between a company and its stakeholders is the essence of business and should be of utmost attention to its managers. Managers should avoid resorting to trade-offs by prioritizing one stakeholder group (e.g., shareholders) over the others and strive to run their companies in the interests of all stakeholders. The idea of pursuing the interests of all stakeholders became revolutionary in management and went far beyond management. R. Edward Freeman’s Selected Works on Stakeholder Theory and Business Ethics (Springer, 2023) is a collection of Ed Freeman’s most influential and important works on stakeholder theory as well as business ethics, humanities, and capitalism.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Neither capitalism nor central planning, this is the future for socialism.
Capitalism isn’t working. But is there a plausible alternative? The Blueprint: How Socialism Can Work in the Real World (Verso, 2026) lays one out: a system where workers control every lever of production, and competitive markets and state planning coexist side by side. Drawing on the history of socialist experiments and the economic debate over planning and markets, The Blueprint confronts the hardest questions about what went wrong in the past—and why it can go right in the future. The result is a socialism worthy of the twenty-first century.
Mike Beggs is senior lecturer in political economy at the University of Sydney. His research focuses on the history of macroeconomic and monetary thinking and policy.
Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Youth workers are essential to the fabric of society. Schools, families, and many of our social institutions rely heavily on their work, yet their contributions often go unrecognized. Laboring in the Shadows: Precarity and Promise in Black Youth Work (Stanford UP, 2026) explores the critical role of Black youth workers, especially in the lives of vulnerable youth, and the challenges they face in their unstable, underappreciated position. Bianca J. Baldridge situates the experiences of Black youth workers within the broader context of anti-Blackness and historical inequities. Drawing on rich interview data from across the United States, Baldridge offers a nuanced analysis of how the precarity of this work—marked by high turnover rates, low wages, and housing insecurity—compounds the challenges these workers face. She highlights how Black youth workers resist these structural harms by adopting and implementing innovative pedagogical practices alongside practices of "freedom dreaming" and joy as forms of resistance and pathways to agency for youth despite their precarious roles. Positioning Black youth workers within a broader network of informal care workers in the United States, Baldridge underscores the significance, fragility, precarity, and power of these dedicated professionals, their essential work, and the possibilities they create for youth.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Photographer Peter Aaron and acclaimed wine writer Jane Anson join the New Books Network to discuss Bordeaux Chronicle (Vendome Press, 2026), a visual and historical portrait of one of the world's most celebrated wine regions, told through photographs taken 55 years apart.
In 1969, at just 23, Aaron traveled through Bordeaux on a Vespa with his Nikon camera, commissioned by legendary wine merchant Alexis Lichine to photograph 64 wine estates for an encyclopedia that was never published. His photographs, largely unseen for decades, captured a Bordeaux far removed from today's glamorous châteaux and state-of-the-art wineries: modest cellars, vineyard laborers, family-run estates, and centuries-old traditions. In 2024, Aaron returned to photograph many of those same properties, offering a fascinating then-and-now portrait of the region.
Aaron recalls his introduction to wine through his father, Sam Aaron of New York's famed Sherry-Lehmann, his teenage experience working at Château Haut-Brion, and the encounters that shaped his original journey. He also reflects on returning half a century later and reconnecting with people and places he first photographed as a young man.
Anson, who has lived in Bordeaux since 2003, brings her deep knowledge of the region's wines, history, and families to the conversation. Together, they trace Bordeaux's rise as a global center of fine wine, luxury, and architectural ambition, touching on advances in winemaking, evolving ownership, environmental practices, and opportunities for women, while considering what has been gained - and lost - along the way.
The interview also delves into the collaboration behind Bordeaux Chronicle, which pairs Aaron's photographic archive with Anson's historical perspective. More than a wine book, it offers a compelling look at the people, places, and traditions that have shaped Bordeaux across generations, and the enduring character of a region where past and present remain closely intertwined.
Interview by Laura Goldberg, longtime food blogger here.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Writing in a time of heightened political anxiety–and when accusations of nationalism, authoritarianism, and proto-fascism have increasingly divided Americans into factions– the authors use their influential performance studies-based 'tourist as actor' framework to unpack the ways that Disney parks and their guests co-create performance of implicit Americanness in the 21st century. Disney Parks and the Construction of American Identity: Tourism, Performance, Anxiety (Lexington Books, 2024) argues that the roles that guests choose to perform-- accepting, declining, negotiating, or overwriting scripts offered to them by the Disney theme park experience-- ultimately reveals much about the nature of the contemporary United States. Focusing primarily on Walt Disney World in Florida, and using case studies on music, geography and ecology, sports, families, and politics, these chapters illuminate the always complicated and often contradictory presentations and performances of America within Disney parks in the deeply contested twenty-first century.
Jennifer A. Kokai is director of the School of Theatre and Dance and the Endowed Chair of the Holloway and the Brit at the University of South Florida.
Tom Robson is assistant teaching professor in Purdue University's Cornerstone Integrated Liberal Arts program.
Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.