Ben Ross Schneider. Business Politics and the State in Twentieth-Century Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xix + 312 pp. ISBN 0-521-83651-4, $70.00 (cloth); 0-521-54500-5, $26.99 (paper).

This volume is a valuable addition to the extensive and disparatebibliography on business associations, state-business relations,collective action, corporatism, and civil society. One of itsmajor achievements is that it will help to redirect researchon these topics. The book encompasses a wide field of scholarlywork hitherto undertaken in a variety of disciplines: politicalscience, economics, sociology of organizations, and economicand business history. In terms of business history, Schneider’sbook is an important contribution to the study of     

Franco Amatori and Geoffrey Jones, eds. Business History around the World. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. xv + 425 pp. ISBN 0-521-82107-X, $65.00.

This important cluster of perspectives on practice and prospectin business history derives from a fall 1998 colloquium heldat Bocconi University in Milan, sponsored jointly by the Institutefor Economic History, the Italian Association of Business Historians(ASSI), Reading University, and Johns Hopkins University. Thecollection echoes its support team’s transnational diversity,presenting an opening set of conceptualizing essays, elevenconcise national/regional overviews, and four closing chaptersthat identify themes for comparative business history. Botha snapshot of the discipline’s preoccupations in the late1990s and a handbook of historiography and work then in progress,Business History around the World is a volume every referencelibrary should own. For practicing historians and graduate students,in my view, parts one and     

Arthur L. Norberg. Computers and Commerce: A Study of Technology and Management at Eckert-Mauchly Computer Company, Engineering Research Associates, and Remington Rand, 1946-1957. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005. x + 347 pp. ISBN 0-262-14090-X, $40.00 (cloth).

Arthur Norberg’s Computers and Commerce is a much-neededstudy of the technical and business history of the Eckert-MauchlyComputer Corporation (EMCC) and Engineering Research Associates(ERA). Although there have been many historical studies aboutIBM, there have been relatively few accounts describing thefirm’s primary competitors or of the early formation ofthe industry. Norberg’s study offers valuable insightsinto the latter by providing a detailed history of the technicaldecisions and financial strategies of the two entrepreneurialfirms that     

Jeffrey R. Fear. Organizing Control: August Thyssen and the Construction of German Corporate Management. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. xv + 956 pp. ISBN 0-674-01492-8, $95.00.

Jeffrey R. Fear, Associate Professor at Harvard Business Schoolsince 2001, has been studying the history of the Germany companyThyssen for many years. The comprehensive study discussed hereis based on Fear’s dissertation, which he defended atStanford University in 1993. In his study, Fear questions earlier conclusions relating tothe development of the     

Thomas C. Owen. Dilemmas of Russian Capitalism: Fedor Chizhov and Corporate Enterprise in the Railroad Age. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. xiv + 275 pp. ISBN 0-674-01549-5, $49.95.

Fedor Chizhov (1811–1877) has long been undervalued inthe history of Imperial Russia, despite his manifest importancein journalism, Slavophile ideology, the development of industry,railroads, banking, and economic thought. The reasons for thisneglect are twofold. From a practical point of view, the sourcethat most illuminates Chizhov and his context—the candidand detailed diary he kept from the age of fourteen—hasnot been available to western researchers until recently, andSoviet (and later Russian) researchers made little use of it.The reason     

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., and Bruce Mazlish, eds. Leviathans: Multinational Corporations and the New Global History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. xiii + 249 pp. ISBN 0-521-84061-9, $65.00 (cloth); ISBN 0-521-54993-0, $22.99 (paper).

The advertising extract, which is this book’s first sentence,reads "Leviathans represents a path-breaking effort to lookat multinational corporations in the round, emphasizing especiallytheir scope, history, development, culture and social implication,and governance problems" (p. i). Given the appropriately globalprestige of the editors and of several of the chapters’authors, one’s curiosity is unavoidably piqued. Whilefew readers will ultimately judge the book to be path-breaking,many will welcome its contribution to     

Alison Fleig Frank. Oil Empire: Visions of Prosperity in Austrian Galicia. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. xx + 343 pp. ISBN 0-674-01887-7, $49.95.

Dirt poor agrarian Galicia an oil empire? How did I miss that?Driven by incredulity to the Habsburg and Polish histories onmy shelves, I found barely a sentence on oil in any of them.No wonder once eastern Galicia fell to Ukraine after the SecondWorld War, behind the Soviet border proper, this colorful andinstructive chapter in the history of Austria and Poland, ofmyriad Poles, Ukrainians, Jews, Germans, Canadians, and otheractors lay dormant. That is, until Alison Fleig Frank came along. Her pioneeringand     

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. Shaping the Industrial Century: The Remarkable Story of the Evolution of the Modern Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. ix + 366 pp. ISBN 0-674-01720-x, $29.95 (Hardcover).

This book is a companion to Alfred Chandler’s previousbook, Inventing the Electronic Century, and provides a broadhistory of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries roughlyfrom the end of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentiethcentury. The history of the chemical and pharmaceutical industriesis remarkable because they are old industries, emerging after1880, and because a small number of companies quickly dominatedthem and have continued to do     

Tom Downey. Planting a Capitalist South: Masters, Merchants, and Manufacturers in the Southern Interior, 1790-1860. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. xiii + 262 pp. ISBN 0-8071-3107-5, $49.95.

South Carolina’s Edgefield and Barnwell districts arenot new terrain for historical investigation, having alreadyconstituted the object of fine studies. Yet, Tom Downey’sbook definitely signals the achievement of the transition towardnew ways of writing southern history. The very word "transition" becomes central to Downey’sreading of the history of Edgefield and Barnwell as he distanceshimself from the interpretive framework into which the termsof the debate on the capitalist/non-capitalist nature of the     

Peter Hayes. From Cooperation to Complicity: Degussa in the Third Reich. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xx + 373 pp. ISBN 0-521-78227-9, $40.00.

Over the past few years, many histories of German companiesduring the Third Reich have been published. They are a responseto the attempts by survivors to obtain restitution from firmsinvolved in the commission of crimes against humanity duringthat period. Peter Hayes’s portrayal of one of the enterprisesthat was most deeply involved, Degussa, is among the best. Hayes begins his work with a disclaimer that "this book is designednot as an all-embracing     

Renato Giannetti and Michelangelo Vasta. L'impresa italiana nel Novecento. Bologna, Italy: Societa Editrice il Mulino, 2003. 486 pp. ISBN 88-15-09496-2, {euro}30.00.

Italian business history is not well known abroad. This is quiteobvious. Even though Italy has been industrialized since the1920s, it is a small country, with little international influence.Its historical patterns of evolution privileged the internalmarket, and although its domestic corporations have traditionallynot been very active abroad, foreign firms have also manifestedopenly their reluctance to invest in a promising but too turbulentenvironment. As a result, Italian business history has fromthe beginning been a domestic story, scarcely appealing forforeign scholars. The Italian historiographic climate was partiallyresponsible for this situation. Business history as a disciplinehas only recently been "legitimized" in Italy (still there areno chairs in the field). For a long time, the     

Werner Abelshauser. The Dynamics of German Industry: Germany's Path toward the New Economy and the American Challenge. New York: Berghahn Books, 2005. vii + 168 pp. ISBN 1-84545-072-8, $45.00.

Werner Abelshauser is a professor of economic history at theUniversity of Bielefeld. He has written about Germany’seconomic history since 1870, with specific studies concerningKrupp between 1933 and 1951, BASF since 1952, and Germany’seconomic history since World War II. Part of a series devotedto historiography, this volume grew out of     

Gordon Boyce. Over Half a Million Careful Owners: A 75-year history of PSIS, 1928-2003. Wellington, NZ: Dunmore Publishing, 2005. 326 pp. ISBN 0-476-0129-29, NZ$29.95 (paper).

Gordon Boyce traces the history of New Zealand’s PSIS,the Public Service Investment Society, in a book commissionedby the company. Boyce, now Professor of International Businessat Queensland University of Technology after thirteen yearsof teaching business and economic history at Victoria Universityof Wellington, is well qualified for the project. His recentpublications include Co-operative Structures in Global Business(2002). Boyce fulfills his commission well, narrating an engagingstory. "Vignettes" provide personal and anecdotal details thatformer staff     

Ronald Seavoy. Origins and Growth of the Global Economy: From the Fifteenth Century Onward. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003. 275 pp. ISBN 0-275-97912-1, $70.95.

Few scholars are confident enough to believe that they can describethe history of the "origins and growth of the global economy"in 275 pages. But Ronald Seavoy, an emeritus professor of historyat Bowling Green State University, uses that history to illuminatetwo themes: to show that the global economy is built on thefoundation of European commercial imperialism and "to show thatthe global economy as it is currently evolving is capable ofproducing     

Kathleen Thelen. How Institutions Evolve: The Political Economy of Skills in Germany, Britain, the United States, and Japan. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xv + 333 pp. ISBN 0-521-83768-5, $75.00 (cloth); ISBN 0-521-54674-5, $29.99 (paper).

Kathleen Thelen has written an incredibly fascinating book thatshould be obligatory reading for anyone interested in the historyof skill formation or the evolution of institutions in general.For those working on the "varieties of capitalism," path-dependency,punctured equilibrium, or historical institutionalism, thistext should feature prominently in their work. Thelen’sgoal in this book is to discover why Germany, Britain, the UnitedStates, and Japan pursued different "paths" of skill formation.She traces the origin of each path     

Om Prakash. Bullion for Goods: European and Indian Merchants in the Indian Ocean Trade, 1500-1800. New Delhi, India: Manohar Publishers, 2004. 426 pp. ISBN 81-7304-538-0, $48.95 (paper).

In this significant book, edited by a well-known scholar ofIndian economic history, Om Prakash attempts to provide thoroughanalysis of the interaction between the European and Indianmerchants, two important groups that participated in the tradingactivities in the region during the period 1500–1800.This was an important period in the premodern Indian historybecause of the phenomenal expansion of global contact and exchangethat led to     

David Mitch, John Brown, and Marco H. D. van Leeuwen, eds. Origins of the Modern Career. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2004. xiii + 342 pp. ISBN 0-7546-3496-5, $99.95.

Here is a sturdy volume that presents the theory, methods, andevidence involving employment patterns that constitute the moderncareer. This information is especially important to scholarsof labor studies who are interested in making historical comparisonsacross disciplinary frameworks. While the audience is likelyto be small, the book’s concerns traverse central juncturesin social history. For an edited volume the essays presented here are unusuallycogent, especially given the range of topics.     

Lowell J. Satre. Chocolate on Trial: Slavery, Politics, and the Ethics of Business. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005. xi + 308 pp. ISBN 0-8214-1625-1, $55.00 (cloth); 0-8214-1626-X, $24.95 (paper).

Solid scholarly historical studies of overseas businesses inAfrica are rare. Rarer still are studies of this area that dealwith ethics and corporate responsibility without cant or overheatedrhetoric. Lowell J. Satre’s Chocolate on Trial standsout as a nuanced history of the dilemmas of doing business responsiblyin a colonial setting. The paradoxes it describes are similarto what many corporations face today. The book demonstratesthat the     

Karen Olson. Wives of Steel: Voices of Women from the Sparrows Point Steelmaking Communities. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005. x + 216 pp. ISBN 0-271-02685-5, $40.00.

In her introduction to Wives of Steel, Karen Olson warns thatthe book is "not a business or labor history of the SparrowsPoint steel complex," stressing that it is instead a genderedanalysis of an industrial community (p. 13). Yet historiansof business and labor should find much of interest in this book.By placing women at the center of her history of Sparrows Point,Maryland, and the neighboring communities of Dundalk and TurnerStation, Olson highlights the     

Richard Dale. The First Crash: Lessons from the South Sea Bubble. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004. vi + 192 pp. ISBN 0-691-11971-6, $29.95.

In The First Crash: Lessons from the South Sea Bubble RichardDale offers an easy-to-read history of the South Sea Bubbleof 1720. Though many others have written on the subject, Dalepens this contribution to argue that the South Sea Bubble wasdriven by irrational investors. Because the South Sea Bubblewas the first modern financial bubble, Dale seeks to establishthat irrational behavior began forming bubbles three