Brands, American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900 (2010)

H.W. Brands.
American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900.
New York: Doubleday, 2010; New York: Anchor Books, 2011 (imprints of Penguin Random House).

Book information: Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.

Author Information:

• Henry W. Brands, Department of History, University of Texas at Austin.
• h. w. brands, his website.
• H. W. Brands, Wikipedia.

Video: H.W. Brands

• Book Discussion on American Colossus, Pritzker Military Museum & Library, Chicago, Illinois, Book TV, C-SPAN, 04 November 2010.
• HW Brands - American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900, Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies, Grand Valley State University, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 08 April 2011. (Hauenstein Center webpage for Brands's talk.)
• H. W. Brands, "How the Rich Got Rich: The Gilded Age in America," Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, Texas, 05 June 2011.
• H. W. Brands, T.J. Stiles and James McGrath Morris, "Age of Titans Panel," Texas Book Festival, Book TV, C-SPAN, 16 October 2010.

Video: Miscellaneous

• Rocky Collins, director, "Insanity on Trial," American Experience, PBS, 1990.
  IMDb information.
  Posted on YouTube by David Hoffman with the title "Guiteau Killed President Garfield."
  This documentary provides a picture of U.S. politics and society in 1880-81.
• Candice Millard, "James A. Garfield," The Kansas City Public Library, 16 May 2012.
  
  • Candice Millard, Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, New York: Doubleday (Random House) 2011.
    [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
• Murder of a President, American Experience, 2016.
  On James A. Garfield (1831–1881).
  Copy at YouTube.

Historical Surveys:

• Reconstruction Era (1865-1877).
• Gilded Age (1860s-1900s).
• Progressive Era (1880s-1910s).
• History of the United States (1865–1918).
• Second Industrial Revolution.
• Economic history of the United States : Late 19th century.
• American Indian Wars.
• Labor history of the United States : Organized labor to 1900.
• History of agriculture in the United States : Railroad Age: 1860–1910.

Major Events:

• First Transcontinental Railroad (completed 1869).
• Erie War (for control of the Erie Railroad, 1860s-1870s).
• Black Friday (1869) gold market and financial crashes.
• Crédit Mobilier of America scandal (1872).
• Panic of 1873.
• Long Depression of 1873-1879.
• The Great Deflation of the 1870s-1890s.
• Centennial Exposition, Philadelphia (1876).
• Compromise of 1877.
• Great Railroad Strike of 1877.
• Haymarket Riot/Massacre/Affair (1886).
• Homestead Strike (1892).
• Panic of 1893.
• Chicago World's Fair (1893; official title: World's Columbian Exposition).
• Pullman Strike (1894).
• Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, New York (1901).

Businessmen active during the second half of the 19th Century:
Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877).
J. P. Morgan (1837-1913).
John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937).
Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919).
---
Daniel Drew (1797-1879).
Ezra Cornell (1807-1874).
Thomas C. Durant (1820-1885).
Jay Cooke (1821-1905).
Collis P. Huntington (1821-1900).
Thomas A. Scott (1823-1881).
Leland Stanford (1824-1893).
Joseph Wharton (1826-1909).
Henry Flagler (1830-1913).
Henry Villard (1835-1900).
Jim Fisk, Jr. (1835-1872).
Jay Gould (1836-1892).
Theodore Vail (1845-1920).
E. H. Harriman (1848-1909).
Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919).
Charles M. Schwab (1862-1939).

Corporations established or active during the second half of the 19th Century:
Standard Oil Company.
Carnegie Steel Company.
Bethlehem Steel.
New York Central Railroad.
Pennsylvania Railroad.
Erie Railroad.
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.
Union Pacific Railroad.
Central Pacific Railroad.
Western Union.
Bell Telephone Company.
Western Electric Company.
Sears, Roebuck & Company.
American Tobacco Company.
National Linseed Oil Trust.
Westinghouse Electric Company.
General Electric Company.
American Sugar Refining Company.
United States Rubber Company.
North American Company.
Wells Fargo & Company.
JP Morgan & Company.

U.S. Presidents: Andrew Johnson (1865-1869); Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1877); Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881); James A. Garfield (1881); Chester A. Arthur (1881-1885); Grover Cleveland (1885-1889, 1893-1897); Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893); William McKinley (1897-1901).

Other Politicians:
Salmon P. Chase (1808-1873).
Samuel J. Tilden (1814-1886).
"Boss" Tweed (1823-1878).
Roscoe Conkling (1829-1888).
James G. Blaine (1830-1893).
Mark Hanna (1837-1904).
John Peter Altgeld (1847-1902).
William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925).

Political Groups, Movements, Ideologies:
Third Party System (1854-1896).
Fourth Party System (1896-1932).
Democratic Party.
Republican Party.
Stalwarts (Republican Party faction).
Half-Breeds (Republican Party faction).
Mugwumps (Republican Party faction).
Bourbon Democrats (Democratic Party faction).
Redeemers (southern Democratic Party faction).
Tammany Hall (New York City Democratic Party faction).
---
Progressivism in the United States.
The Grange.
Farmers' Alliance.
Populists.
Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
National American Woman Suffrage Association.
American Anti-Imperialist League (1898-1920).
Free silver.
Georgism.

Political Activists, Labor Leaders:
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902).
Frederick Douglass (1818-1895).
Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906).
Frances Willard (1839-1898).
Samuel Gompers (1850-1924).
Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926).
Jane Addams (1860-1935);
Bill Haywood (1869-1928).
Emma Goldman (1869-1940).

Engineers, Scientists, and Others:
Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904).
John Wesley Powell (1834-1902).
George Westinghouse (1846-1914).
Thomas Edison (1847-1931).
Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922).
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943).

Economics and Political Economy:

• Charles Francis Adams Jr. (1835-1915) author of Railroads, Their Origin and Problems (1878) (Google Books) and, with his brother Henry Adams, Chapters of Erie, and Other Essays (1871) (Google Books).
• John Hay (1838-1905) author of The Bread-Winners: A Social Study (1883) (Google Books).
• Henry George (1839-1897) author of Progress and Poverty (1879) (Google Books; Archive.org Audio).
• Henry Demarest Lloyd (1847-1903) author of Wealth Against Commonwealth (1894) (Google Books; Archive.org).
• Edward Bellamy (1850-1898) author of Looking Backward: 2000–1887 (1888) (Google Books; Project Gutenberg; Archive.org).
• William Hope Harvey (1851-1936) author of Coin's Financial School (1894) (Google Books).
• Ida Tarbell (1857-1944) author of The History of the Standard Oil Company (1904) (Volume 1, Google Books; Volume 2, Google Books) and The Tariff in Our Times (1911) (Google Books).
• Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929).

Professors, Other Intellectuals:
Francis Parkman (1823-1893).
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899).
Henry Adams (1838-1918).
William Graham Sumner (1840-1910).
Louis Brandeis (1856-1941).
Booker T. Washington (1856-1915).
W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963).

Journalists:
Horace Greeley (1811-1872).
Charles Anderson Dana (1819-1897).
Thomas Nast (1840-1902).
Ambrose Bierce (1842-c.1914).
Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911).
Jacob Riis (1849-1914).
Ida B. Wells (1862-1931).
William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951).
Lincoln Steffens (1866-1936).
William Allen White (1868-1944).
---
List of 19th-century American journalists.

Literature, Art:
Herman Melville (1819-1891).
Walt Whitman (1819-1892).
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886).
Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888).
Horatio Alger, Jr. (1832-1899).
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903).
Mark Twain (1835-1910).
William Dean Howells (1837-1920).
Henry James (1843-1916).
Thomas Eakins (1844-1916).
Mary Cassatt (1844-1926).
Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909).
Kate Chopin (1850-1904).
Edith Wharton (1862-1937).
Frank Norris (1870-1902).
Stephen Crane (1871-1900).
Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945).
---
List of 19th-century American novelists.
List of 19th-century American poets.

Legislation, Court Decisions, Constitutional Amendments:
Revenue Act of 1861.
Revenue Act of 1862.
Revenue Act of 1864.
Homestead Act of 1862.
Pacific Railroad Acts (1862-1866).
Morrill Land-Grant Acts (1862, 1890).
Comstock laws (1873).
Coinage Act of 1873.
Civil Rights Act of 1875.
Black Codes and Jim Crow laws (1865-1965).
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
Dawes Act of 1887.
Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.
Tariff Act of 1890 (McKinley Tariff).
Gold Standard Act of 1900.
---
Slaughter-House Cases, 1873.
Springer v. United States, 1881.
Civil Rights Cases, 1883.
Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co., 1886.
Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896.
Muller v. Oregon, 1908.
Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, 1911.
---
Reconstruction Amendments (XIII, XIV, XV).
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1865).
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1868).
Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1870).
Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1913).

Other books on U.S. History, late Nineteenth Century, noted in this blog:

• Brands, The Reckless Decade: America in the 1890s (1995; 2002).
• Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (1967).
• Beatty, Age of Betrayal: The Triumph of Money in America, 1865-1900 (2007).
• White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (2011).
• Fusfeld, The Rise & Repression of Radical Labor in the United States 1877-1918 (1980; 1992).
• Diner, A Very Different Age: Americans of the Progressive Era (1998).
• Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877 (1967).

Diner, A Very Different Age: Americans of the Progressive Era (1998)

Steven J. Diner.
A Very Different Age: Americans of the Progressive Era.
New York: Hill and Wang / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.

Book information: Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.

Links:

• Steven J. Diner, Rutgers University, Newark.
• Steven J. Diner, Have You Met Rutgers-Newark?
• Gilded Age, Wikipedia.
• Progressive Era, Wikipedia.
• Second Industrial Revolution, Wikipedia.
• Economic history of the United States: Late 19th century, Early 20th century, Wikipedia.

This book is very much a labor history of the period it covers, roughly 1890-1920. This is not made explicit in the book's title but one might glean it from the chapter titles. Most chapters focus on the labor history of particular occupational or social groups: industrial workers; immigrants; farmers and other rural people; African Americans; white collar workers; professionals. When discussing a group's difficult working conditions the author frequently vaguely attributes it to capitalism and goes no further. This is not a work of business history or economic history; also, it is not a history of the progressive movement, though the topic arises occasionally, especially in the penultimate chapter.

Cameron & Neal, A Concise Economic History of the World, 4e (2003)

Rondo Cameron and Larry Neal.
A Concise Economic History of the World: From Paleolithic Times to the Present, fourth edition.
Oxford University Press, 2003.

Book information: Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.

Links:

• Larry D. Neal, Department of Economics, University of Illinois.
• Rondo Cameron, Wikipedia.

Textiles and Trade: Rivoli (2005; 2009); Bennett (2008); Timmerman (2008; 2012)

The (cotton) textiles industry has been a focus of controversy and misunderstanding since the beginning of the first industrial revolution. That industry can serve as a useful example or case study for learning about the many aspects of economic change. One can see similar patterns of change associated with cotton textiles repeated several times over the last two centuries, within and between several countries. Some topics: Technological change as a driver of economic change. Labor exploitation, labor organizing, legal development driven by the need to improve labor conditions, and more general social welfare development. Societies' transitions along a path of increasing industrial development. Trade: relationships within and between countries in the exchange of raw materials, production technology, intermediate and finished goods. Financial sector contributions to economic activity.

These three popular (that is, non-technical, non-specialist) books on contemporary, mostly cotton, textiles and international trade introduce some of those topics.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pietra Rivoli.
The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade.
Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005.
A second edition was published in 2009.

Book information: Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com; book webpage at author's website.

Links:

• Pietra Rivoli, McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University.
• Pietra Rivoli, Wikipedia.
• Brad DeLong says Rivoli's is "The best book about modern international trade ever written." (That is certainly true of the three books discussed in this blog post.)

Video:

• Pietra Rivoli, "U.S.-China Trade Issues," Washington Journal, C-SPAN, 21 May 2005.
• Pietra Rivoli, "Book Discussion on The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy," National Press Club Book Fair, C-SPAN, 17 November 2005.
• Pietra Rivoli, "Book Discussion on The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy," Bentley College, Waltham, Massachusetts, C-SPAN, 31 August 2006.
  (Press release on Rivoli's visit to Bentley College.)
• Pietra Rivoli, "The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy," Voices, University of California, Santa Barbara, 05 March 2008.
  (Lecture information webpage at UCSB.)
• Pietra Rivoli, "The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy," Bryant University, Smithfield, Rhode Island, 04 September 2013.
  (Rivoli was the Plenary Session speaker at the Class of 2017 Opening Convocation at Bryant University.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Joe Bennett.
Where Underpants Come From: From Cotton Fields to Checkout Counters -- Travels Through the New China and Into the New Global Economy.
New York: The Overlook Press, 2009.
First published: London: Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2008.

Book information: Publisher, hardcover; Publisher, paperback; Google Books; Amazon.com, hardback; Amazon.com, paperback; book webpage at author's website.

Links:

• Joe Bennett, author's website.
• Joe Bennett, Wikipedia.

Video:

• SimonSchusterVideos, "Author Joe Bennett Discussing Where Underpants Came From," YouTube.
  This short video is a very nice introduction in which Bennett reads excerpts from his book.

Bennett works as a newspaper columnist and travel writer and his book reflects that: it's about his travels to the various places, mostly in China, associated with the production and distribution of his underpants. Consequently the book focuses a little more on Joe Bennett than on underpants (or cotton textiles and international trade) than I would prefer, but other readers with a less technical inclination than myself may prefer that. Nevertheless, it is a good introduction to China and the textiles industry.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kelsey Timmerman.
Where am I Wearing: A Global Tour to the Countries, Factories, and People That Make Our Clothes.
Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2008.
A second edition was published in 2012.

Book information: Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com; book webpage at author's website.

Kelsey Timmerman, whereiamwearing.com, author's website.

While Rivoli and Bennett discuss the wide range of economic activities involved in the production of cotton textiles, from cotton agriculture to yarn and thread to cloth to garment assembly (with less focus on final product transportation, distribution, merchandizing, marketing, and retail), Timmerman instead limits his attention to garment assembly and the world of low-skilled labor with visits to factories in Honduras, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China and the USA. Also whereas Bennett is an older and more experienced travel writer, Timmerman is at the beginning of his career. While he occasionally provides interesting insights into the lives of garment workers, they are imbedded in a discussion that often seems amateurish (Timmerman's profession is indeterminate given his anecdotes of various occupations: retail sales, Scuba diver/beach bum, activist, journalist, blogger).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wikipedia Articles:

• Textile industry
• Textile manufacturing
• Textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution
• Textile
• Multi Fibre Arrangement
• Bangladesh textile industry
• Economy of Cambodia : Industries
• Economy of China

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Textile Industry Videos:

• David Macaulay, "Industrial Revolution: Spinning Mills," PBS, 2002 : YouTube.
  Discusses the 19th century textile industry in the USA.
• "How Textile Mills are Modernizing," General Electric, 1948 : YouTube.
• How It's Made: Cotton Yarn : YouTube.
• How It's Made: Fabrics : YouTube.
• How Jeans Are Made : YouTube.
• Still Standing - The Real Story of the NC Textile Industry, 2012 : YouTube.
• Factory Video, Jawahar Spinning Mills, Maharashtra, India, 2011 : YouTube.
• Al Karam Textile Mills, Karachi, Pakistan : YouTube.
• Pendleton Woolen Mills, Washougal, Washington, USA : YouTube.

Leverett & Leverett, "The Rise of the Petroyuan and the Slow Erosion of Dollar Hegemony," July 2014

Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, "Petrodollars, Petroyuan, and the Ongoing Erosion of American Hegemony," Going to Tehran (blog), 30 July 2014.

Also published at: The World Financial Review, July-August 2014 as "The Rise of the Petroyuan and the Slow Erosion of Dollar Hegemony."

This article provides a brief history of U.S. dollar hegemony, how and why it developed and some factors currently acting against it. Some books I'm looking forward to reading on this topic include:

• Michael Pettis, The Great Rebalancing: Trade, Conflict, and the Perilous Road Ahead for the World Economy, Princeton University Press, 2013.
  (Publisher; Amazon.com.)
• Barry Eichengreen, Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar and the Future of the International Monetary System, Oxford University Press, 2011.
  (Publisher; Amazon.com.)
• James Rickards, Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis, Portfolio / Penguin Group, 2011.
  (Publisher; Amazon.com.)
• Steven S. Cohen and J. Bradford DeLong, The End of Influence: What Happens When Other Countries Have the Money, Basic Books, 2010.
  (Publisher; Amazon.com.)
• William R. Clark, Petrodollar Warfare: Oil, Iraq and the Future of the Dollar, New Society Publishers, 2005.
  (Publisher; Amazon.com.)

Bronstein & Harris, Empire, State, and Society: Britain since 1830 (2012)

Jamie L. Bronstein and Andrew T. Harris.
Empire, State, and Society: Britain since 1830.
Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.

Book information: Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.

Some Wikipedia Articles:

• History of the United Kingdom.

Barlow, Thomas Becket (1990; 2002)

Frank Barlow.
Thomas Becket.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986; 1990.
London: The Folio Society, 2002.

Book information: Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.

This book is on the Recommended Reading Short List in Cantor's The Civilization of the Middle Ages (1993).

Some Wikipedia Articles:

• Frank Barlow (1911–2009).
• The Anarchy (1135-1153).
• Henry II of England (1133-1189, r.1154–1189) aka Henry Curtmantle and Henry Plantagenet.
• Thomas Becket (c.1118-1170).
• Becket controversy (1163-1170).
• Constitutions of Clarendon (1164).
• Investiture Controversy (11th & 12th centuries).
• House of Plantagenet (ruled England during 12th-15th centuries).
• England in the Middle Ages.
• History of England.
• Kingdom of England (927–1707).
• Anglo-Norman England (11th-15th centuries).
• Angevin Empire (12th - early 13th centuries).

Turner, Crisis? What Crisis?: Britain in the 1970s (2008)

Alwyn W. Turner.
Crisis? What Crisis?: Britain in the 1970s.
London: Aurum Press, 2008.

Book information: Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com; Amazon.co.uk; book webpage at author's website.

Author Information:

• Alwyn W. Turner, his website.
• Omniana, blog of Alwyn W. Turner.
• Alwyn W. Turner, Twitter.
• Alwyn W. Turner, University of Chichester.
• Alwyn W. Turner, The Quarto Group (publisher).
• Alwyn Turner, YouTube channel.

Video and Audio:

• Alwyn Turner, "Changing Britain | Keynote" (followed by discussion with David Kynaston), Southbank Centre, London, 18 April 2015.
  (Event webpage at Southbank Centre.)
• Andrew Marr with Alwyn Turner, Tristram Hunt, Janet Daley, and Martin Rowson, The 'death of socialism'?, Start the Week, BBC Radio 4, 02 April 2012 (copy on YouTube).
  This discussion frequently touches on Turner's ebook Things Can Only Get Bitter: The Lost Generation of 1992, Aurum Press, 2012. [Amazon.com; Amazon.co.uk.] Extract at New Statesman.

Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877 (1967)

Kenneth M. Stampp.
The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877.
New York: Vintage Books / Random House, 1967.

Book information: Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.

Links:

• Kenneth M. Stampp, Wikipedia.
• History of the United States (1849–65), Wikipedia.
• History of the United States (1865–1918), Wikipedia.
• Reconstruction Era, Wikipedia.

Wheen, How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions (2004)

Francis Wheen.
How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions.
London: Fourth Estate, 2004.
New York: PublicAffairs, 2004.

Book information: Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.

The book was initially published in the USA with the title Idiot Proof: Deluded Celebrities, Irrational Power Brokers, Media Morons, and the Erosion of Common Sense [Google Books] but the later USA paperback edition reverted to the UK title How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World.

Author information:

• Francis Wheen (b. 1957), Wikipedia.
• Francis Wheen, Twitter.
• Francis Wheen, Fourth Estate Publisher.
• Private Eye.
• Francis Wheen, "Francis Wheen's top 10 modern delusions," The Guardian, 03 February 2004.
• "A life in writing," Interview by Nicholas Wroe, The Guardian, 28 August 2009.

Video: Francis Wheen

• Francis Wheen and Chris Lehmann, "Book Discussion on Idiot Proof," Borders Books and Music, Washington, D.C., BookTV, C-SPAN, 24 June 2004.

Book Reviews:

• David McKie, "Twaddle unswaddled," The Guardian, 07 February 2004.
• Chris Lehmann, "Balderdashing Into Doom," The Washington Post, 22 June 2004.