147 Posts Found

The ever-popular coffee-table book, filled with striking pictures or slick graphics, tends to exalt travel or cooking. But Finch, the best-selling author of The Art of Walt Disney and Highways to Heaven, tries for something different. He takes on the history of humankind as seen through the dealings of people in different marketplaces, whether it is the Athenian “agora” or the New York Stock Exchange. … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Christopher Finch | Subjects: Finance, History

The era that defined Wall Street is finally, officially over. Michael Lewis, who chronicled its excess in Liar’s Poker, returns to his old haunt to figure out what went wrong.

Content: Article | Author: Michael Lewis | Source: Portfolio | Subjects: Economics, Finance, History

British journalist Jeffreys (Aspirin: The Remarkable Story of a Wonder Drug) presents a compelling account of the comprehensive collaboration of Germany’s major chemical conglomerate with Adolf Hitler’s genocidal dictatorship. The fourth largest industrial concern in the world, IG Farben was a key element of German foreign policy. Its employees were well treated. Its scientists won Nobel prizes. Its administrators created an international network controlling the … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Diarmuid Jeffreys | Subjects: Ethics, History, Social Responsibility (ESG)

Last year, on the 100th anniversary of their book’s subject, Robert F. Bruner and Sean D. Carr published The Panic of 1907: Lessons Learned from the Market’s Perfect Storm (John Wiley & Sons). A year later, as we weather a far greater financial storm, the book’s lessons are more relevant than ever. From their analysis of one of the worst banking panics in U.S. history, … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Edward Teach, Robert F. Bruner | Source: CFO Publishing | Subjects: Economics, Finance, History

Kleiner’s freewheeling portrait gallery focuses on corporate mavericks of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s who pioneered self-managing work teams, responsiveness to customers, grassroots organizing and other ways to imbue corporations with a sense of the value of human relationships. Starting with British management scientist Eric Trist, whose experiments in industrial democracy in the 1940s laid the groundwork for U.S. managerial innovations of the 1980s, Kleiner … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Art Kleiner | Subjects: History, Organizational Behavior

With his latest book, historian Niall Ferguson adeptly charts the role of money throughout the history of man as well as the role of man in the history of money. From the rise of money and credit to the bond and stock markets, and the rise of insurance and real estate markets to, more recently, international finance, Ferguson demonstrates that financial knowledge is, in many … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Niall Ferguson | Subjects: Finance, History

This paper presents a new database on the timing of systemic banking crises and policy responses to resolve them. The database covers the universe of systemic banking crises for the period 1970-2007, with detailed data on crisis containment and resolution policies for 42 crisis episodes, and also includes data on the timing of currency crises and sovereign debt crises. The database extends and builds on … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Fabian Valencia, Luc Laeven | Source: International Monetary Fund | Subjects: Economics, Finance, History | Industry: Finance / Banking

The basis of modern organization and decision theory, this influential essay has motivated administrators and students of managerial technique for more than 80 years. The author discusses eliminating inefficiency through a system based on principles applicable to individual and collective activities. A ground-breaking, and still-inspiring work.

Content: Book | Author: Frederick Winslow Taylor | Subjects: History, Management

Ida Tarbell’s reporting into Standard Oil led not only to the break-up of a large oil monopoly. It also precipitated a shift in US attitudes to competition and big business.

Content: Article | Author: Morgen Witzel | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subject: History

At some point in the past few years, that overworked phrase “the post-Cold War world” fell out of fashion, even though it has not really been replaced. It was neither a satisfactory nor a popular way of describing the strange and somewhat anomalous time after the Gorbachev reforms and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union changed the geopolitical furniture. Some preferred to describe the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Martin Walker | Source: Kearney | Subjects: History, International

There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.

Content: Quotation | Author: Harry Truman | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subject: History

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

Content: Quotation | Author: Mark Twain | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subject: History

One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.

Content: Quotation | Author: Will Durant | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subject: History

Wise men say, and not without reason, that whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who have been, and ever will be, animated by the same passions and thus they must necessarily have the same results.

Content: Quotation | Author: Niccoló Machiavelli | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Future, History

A sense of history is essential to anyone who wants to be a leader, because history is both about people and about cause and effect. The American historian Samuel Eliot Morison liked to say that history teaches us how to behave–that is, what to do and what not to do in a variety of situations. History is the human story.

History also shows how the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: History, Leadership

In the wake of World War II, Georges Doriot helped found the world’s first public venture capital firm, American Research and Development. Doriot (1899—1987) was also a professor at Harvard Business School for 40 years. This book excerpt from Creative Capital: Georges Doriot and the Birth of Venture Capital (HBS Press) describes how ARD first came to “marry” investors and innovators.

Content: Article | Author: Spencer E. Ante | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: History, Venture Capital

strategy+business reviews the best business biography books of 2007

Content: Related Content | Author: James O’Toole | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: History, People

In the pantheon of the industrial giants who dominated late-nineteenth-century American capitalism, Andrew Carnegie has consistently stood out as the most fascinating and enigmatic character. Celebrated as the creator of the modern steel industry, he earned equal renown for the disbursement of his vast fortune to numerous philanthropic causes. As opposed to the cold, austere image of a Rockefeller, Carnegie seemed to radiate genuine warmth … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: David Nasaw | Subjects: History, People

“History is economics in action,” as Karl Marx noted. Marx, who got almost everything else wrong but most likely got this right, connected economics to everyday reality.

In their famous book The Lessons of History, Will and Ariel Durant explain that economics in action is the contest among individuals, groups, classes, and states for food, fuel, materials, and economic power.

Content: Quotation | Author: Darrol J. Stanley | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subjects: Economics, History

In this biography, Pulitzer Prize winner McCraw neatly divides his emphasis between Schumpeter’s professional and personal life. He portrays his subject as a somewhat self-absorbed insatiable scholar not entirely comfortable with his contemporaries, which might explain marriages and affairs with much older and younger women, as well as his affinity with students and often-strained relations with colleagues of his own generation. McGraw lucidly addresses Schumpeter’s … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Thomas K. McCraw | Subjects: Economics, History, People