Nathan Tankus
Research Director @thepublicmoney.I write a newsletter on the Coronavirus Depression, Macroeconomics and Money called Notes on the Crises. Fiancé @NoahZazanis
Book Recommendations:
Recommended by Nathan Tankus
“@gavinmuellerphd @n_hold Listening to Vladislav Zubok's new book on the Soviet Union's collapse and he does a great job of emphasizing how merely bad conditions don't lead to collapse but the rage that comes once you realize things can be different and are able to feel the full weight of past destruction” (from X)
Vladislav M. Zubok(you?)
Vladislav M. Zubok(you?)
A major study of the collapse of the Soviet Union—showing how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms led to its demise “A deeply informed account of how the Soviet Union fell apart.”—Rodric Braithwaite, Financial Times “[A] masterly analysis.”—Joshua Rubenstein, Wall Street Journal In 1945 the Soviet Union controlled half of Europe and was a founding member of the United Nations. By 1991, it had an army four million strong with five thousand nuclear-tipped missiles and was the second biggest producer of oil in the world. But soon afterward the union sank into an economic crisis and was torn apart by nationalist separatism. Its collapse was one of the seismic shifts of the twentieth century. Thirty years on, Vladislav Zubok offers a major reinterpretation of the final years of the USSR, refuting the notion that the breakup of the Soviet order was inevitable. Instead, Zubok reveals how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms, intended to modernize and democratize the Soviet Union, deprived the government of resources and empowered separatism. Collapse sheds new light on Russian democratic populism, the Baltic struggle for independence, the crisis of Soviet finances—and the fragility of authoritarian state power.
Recommended by Nathan Tankus
“Julie Mell's book The Myth of the Medieval Jewish Moneylender does a great job of showing how this false "foreignness" was essential to building up the myths that drove European Christian bloodlust for Jews. https://t.co/2LyJp7Gm9o” (from X)
Recommended by Nathan Tankus
“@jbouie @KhalilGMuhammad Fantastic book.” (from X)
Khalil Gibran Muhammad(you?)
Khalil Gibran Muhammad(you?)
Lynch mobs, chain gangs, and popular views of black southern criminals that defined the Jim Crow South are well known. We know less about the role of the urban North in shaping views of race and crime in American society. Following the 1890 census, the first to measure the generation of African Americans born after slavery, crime statistics, new migration and immigration trends, and symbolic references to America as the promised land of opportunity were woven into a cautionary tale about the exceptional threat black people posed to modern urban society. Excessive arrest rates and overrepresentation in northern prisons were seen by many whites—liberals and conservatives, northerners and southerners—as indisputable proof of blacks’ inferiority. In the heyday of “separate but equal,” what else but pathology could explain black failure in the “land of opportunity”? The idea of black criminality was crucial to the making of modern urban America, as were African Americans’ own ideas about race and crime. Chronicling the emergence of deeply embedded notions of black people as a dangerous race of criminals by explicit contrast to working-class whites and European immigrants, this fascinating book reveals the influence such ideas have had on urban development and social policies.
Recommended by Nathan Tankus
“@ldogmensh I wish! I think people learn through trial and error in graduate school unfortunately. But this is a better question for those scholars who have produced great work doing it. Like Marco Bertilorenzi and his aluminum cartel book” (from X)
Marco Bertilorenzi(you?)
Aluminium was one of most cartelised industries in the international economic panorama of the 20th century. Born following the discovery of electrolytic smelting process in 1886, this industry, even in its infancy, established a cartel which characterised its history until nearly 1980. Managers of the aluminium industry from various historical eras and countries shared the same vision about the development of their industry: to keep prices as stable as possible in order to encourage expansions and to provide return on investments. Price instability, which characterised the trade of other commodities, was unknown to the aluminium industry. This bookneither argues that cartels are fundamentally evil, nor attempts to demonstrate that cartels are optimal business organisations. It instead provides an in-depth and frank analysis of the internal working of industrial organisations and of the interplay between cartels and political powers and institutions. The International Aluminium Cartel offers explanations for the construction and collapse of cartels, descriptions of their operations, and an historical interpretation of their experiences. Incorporating information gleaned from a unique collection of private and public archives from several countries, this unique study will appeal to a wide variety of readers, including academics interested in industrial and business history.