Sven Beckert has spent nearly a decade trying to understand the 1,000-year-old thing that capitalism is. "This is a ...

Introduction : History's changing fortunes -- The rise and fall of cultural theories -- The challenge of globalization -- Rethinking society and the self -- New purposes, new paradigms "With history ...

Adam Smith, widely considered the first major theorist of capitalism, abhorred the institution of slavery. "Whatever work [a slave] does…can be squeezed out of him by violence only, and not by any ...

In September, 1639, John Winthrop, the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, recorded in his journal a dreadful tale of Puritan true crime. One Robert Keayne had prospered as a London merchant ...