Economics

New Non-Fiction Books
New Book Announcement: “Labor of Reinvention: Entrepreneurship in the New Chinese Digital Economy” by Lin Zhang
2 April 20232 April 2023
From start-up founders in the Chinese equivalent of Silicon Valley to rural villages experiencing an e-commerce boom to middle-class women reselling luxury goods, the rise of internet-based entrepreneurship has affected every part of China. Problematizing worldwide euphoria about digital entrepreneurship while complicating the dichotomy of “China threat vs. China model”, The Labor of Reinvention attends…
Read More New Book Announcement: “Labor of Reinvention: Entrepreneurship in the New Chinese Digital Economy” by Lin Zhang
Non-Fiction Reviews
“Planning Democracy: Modern India’s Quest for Development” by Nikhil Menon
14 December 202213 April 2023
“Thou art the ruler of the minds of all people, dispenser of India’s destiny. Thy name rouses the hearts of the Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat and Maratha, of the Dravida, Orissa and Bengal.” Thus begins Rabindranath Tagore’s Jana Gana Mana. In 1939, Jawaharlal Nehru traveled to Calcutta and received Tagore’s blessing to make it India’s national…
Read More “Planning Democracy: Modern India’s Quest for Development” by Nikhil Menon
Podcast
Podcast with Annah Lake Zhu, author of “Rosewood: Endangered Species Conservation and The Rise of Global China” by Annah Lake Zhu
18 August 202218 August 2022
Money does strange things to people, as Annah Lake Zhu notes in her latest book Rosewood: Endangered Species Conservation and the Rise of Global China.
Read More Podcast with Annah Lake Zhu, author of “Rosewood: Endangered Species Conservation and The Rise of Global China” by Annah Lake Zhu
Podcast
Podcast with Ramon Pacheco Pardo, author “Shrimp to Whale: South Korea from the Forgotten War to K-Pop”
4 August 20224 August 2022
If there’s a country that “punches above its weight”, it’s South Korea. It’s home to some of the world’s largest and most important companies, and the source of pop culture that dominates Asia—and even planted a foothold in the West.
Read More Podcast with Ramon Pacheco Pardo, author “Shrimp to Whale: South Korea from the Forgotten War to K-Pop”
Non-Fiction Reviews
“An Object of Seduction: Chinese Silk in the Early Modern Transpacific Trade, 1500–1700” by Xiolin Duan
16 July 2022
Whether the Manila Galleon—the crossings between Manila and Acapulco that began three-quarters of the way through the 16th century—really ushered what has since come to be called “globalization” remains a matter of some debate, but one which depends more on what is considered globalization rather than the global significance of this trade itself.
Read More “An Object of Seduction: Chinese Silk in the Early Modern Transpacific Trade, 1500–1700” by Xiolin Duan
Non-Fiction Reviews
“Rosewood: Endangered Species Conservation and The Rise of Global China” by Annah Lake Zhu
29 June 2022
China’s Pearl River Delta recently surpassed Tokyo as the world’s largest urban area. Amid that vast conurbation of over 60 million people stands the city of Zhongshan. The birthplace of Sun Yat-sen, Zhonghsan’s factories supply China’s middle class with consumer goods like lighting, furniture, and appliances. Looking east across the Indian Ocean, one finds Antalaha,…
Read More “Rosewood: Endangered Species Conservation and The Rise of Global China” by Annah Lake Zhu
New Non-Fiction Books
New Book Announcement: “La plata y el Pacífico: China, Hispanoamérica y el nacimiento de la globalización, 1565-1815” by Peter Gordon and Juan José Morales
27 June 202227 June 2022
The Spanish translation of The Silver Way: China, Spanish America and the Birth of Globalisation, 1565–1815—the story of the Manila Galleon—with a new introduction by Elvira Roca Barea: “It explains to us not only what it meant in the past but what it still means today to understand the present and even the future of…
Read More New Book Announcement: “La plata y el Pacífico: China, Hispanoamérica y el nacimiento de la globalización, 1565-1815” by Peter Gordon and Juan José Morales
Non-Fiction Reviews
“Carbon Technocracy Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia” by Victor Seow
10 May 2022
In 2021, China launched the world’s largest carbon market in furtherance of its “dual carbon” goals of peak emissions in 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. That same year, China set a new record for coal production, extracting over 4 billion tons. How any country could reconcile such output with rising environmental standards remains to…
Read More “Carbon Technocracy Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia” by Victor Seow
Non-Fiction Reviews
“A History of Economic Thought in Japan: 1600-1945” by Hiroshi Kawaguchi and Sumiyo Ishii
18 February 202228 February 2022
On 27 July 1905, the United States Secretary of War met with the Prime Minister of Japan. Both men spoke for industrializing countries with recent military victories in Asia. The potential for conflict loomed, distant but real. Happily, the two statesmen found a solution. In the Taft-Katsura Memorandum, the US recognized Japan’s suzerainty over Korea…
Read More “A History of Economic Thought in Japan: 1600-1945” by Hiroshi Kawaguchi and Sumiyo Ishii
Podcast
Podcast with Cheng Li, author of “Middle Class Shanghai: Reshaping US-China Engagement”
6 January 2022
In mid-November, Washington and Beijing mutually agreed to start granting journalist visas again, putting an end to months of reciprocal visa rejections and denials. A perhaps minor, yet still important, thawing among grander narratives of decoupling and worsening relations between the two countries.
Read More Podcast with Cheng Li, author of “Middle Class Shanghai: Reshaping US-China Engagement”
Non-Fiction Reviews
“Political Economy of Social Change and Development in Nepal” by Jeevan R Sharma
1 January 2022
Nepal has undergone immense social change since 1951 and the end of the Rana dynasty. It has been transformed from a feudal autocratic monarchy to a federal republican democracy. Its politics, society and economy have been irrevocably changed by coups, civil war and political movements. So vast and far reaching are these changes that Jeevan…
Read More “Political Economy of Social Change and Development in Nepal” by Jeevan R Sharma
Non-Fiction Reviews
“Middle Class Shanghai: Reshaping US-China Engagement” by Cheng Li
7 December 20217 December 2021
Historian RG Collingwood once wrote that “We study history in order to see more clearly into the situation in which we are called upon to act.” Few people see US-China relations with greater clarity than Cheng Li, who worked as a physician during the Cultural Revolution before earning his PhD in Political Science at Princeton….
Read More “Middle Class Shanghai: Reshaping US-China Engagement” by Cheng Li
Podcast
Podcast with Thane Gustafson, author of “Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change”
2 December 202119 December 2021
With COP26 and high fossil fuel prices, energy is back in the headlines. And Russia, as one of the world’s largest producers of hydrocarbons, is part of the conversation—most recently, in Putin’s refusal to expand oil production to ease global prices.
Read More Podcast with Thane Gustafson, author of “Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change”
Non-Fiction Reviews
“Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change” by Thane Gustafson
9 November 20219 November 2021
One doubts COP26 made much of an impression on Georgetown University’s Thane Gustafson; his recent book Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change doesn’t even entertain the possibility that climate change can be stopped, to say nothing of being reversed.
Read More “Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change” by Thane Gustafson
Podcast
Podcast with Anthea Roberts and Nicolas Lamp, authors of “Six Faces of Globalization: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why It Matters”
4 November 20218 November 2021
Globalization is possibly the most important economic phenomenon of the past several decades. Opening borders, increasing trade and deepening integration has transformed our economies, our societies and our politics. Globalization changed establishment politics; the reaction against it transformed those against the establishment.
Read More Podcast with Anthea Roberts and Nicolas Lamp, authors of “Six Faces of Globalization: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why It Matters”

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