New Books in Economic and Business History

A revealing look at the decline in formal employment in favor of
hiring contractors, freelancers, temps, and marginal workers, who are
excluded from traditional benefits and career ladders.

Companies cannot exist without workers, but they are increasingly
reluctant to have employees. Instead of providing the benefits and
protections that have traditionally come with employee status,
businesses are turning to tactics that let them treat people as
interchangeable parts, to be used and discarded as needed. Drawing on an
original survey of over 6,000 workers, Disposable Workers: The Transformation of Employment (Harvard University Press, 2026) reveals
the striking extent of this transformation across the occupational
hierarchy, affecting everyone from janitors to nurses.

Paul Osterman identifies three distinct categories of disposable
workers: contractors, freelancers, and marginal employees. The marginal
category, unique to Osterman’s analysis, describes workers who are
employees from a narrow legal standpoint but are held at arm’s length by
their firm—left without job security, skill training, or opportunities
for promotion. Many low-wage service workers toil in marginal jobs, but
so do white-collar professionals such as adjunct university faculty and
staff attorneys at law firms. When the three categories are added up,
they account for more than 35 percent of the American workforce.

Not all disposable workers object to their arrangements. But most
contractors and marginal employees would prefer standard employment, and
there is a significant cost to their current status. In response, Disposable Workers
offers a range of policy recommendations, including mechanisms to
prevent over-reliance on contracting and freelancing as well as reforms
to improve job quality for part-timers and marginal employees. As the
deconstruction of employment affects more and more workers, the
importance of such measures will only grow.

Paul Osterman is Professor Emeritus of Human Resources and Management
at the MIT Sloan School of Management. His numerous books include Good Jobs America, Who Will Care for Us? (Russell Sage, 2011); and The Truth about Middle Managers (Harvard Business School Press, 2009), Who Will Care For Us: Long Term Care and the Long Term Workforce (Russell Sage,2017), Gathering Power: The Future of Progressive Politics in America (Beacon Press, 2003); Securing Prosperity: The American Labor Market: How It Has Changed and What to Do About It (Princeton University Press, 1999), and Working In America: A Blueprint for the New Labor Market (MIT Press, 2001).
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Tamil Buddhism and Brahminism in Modern India: Deep Resistance Against Caste (Oxford University Press, 2026) explores
Tamil Buddhism in modern India, focusing on its emergence
as a response to caste-based oppression during the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. Central to this movement was Pandit Iyothee
Thass (1845–1914), a pioneering intellectual who reinterpreted India’s
Buddhist past to challenge brahminical dominance. Thass reasoned that it
was because many Indians followed Buddhist cultural and material
traditions in ancient times, that they were oppressed as untouchables
and lower castes by self-privileging-caste groups, such as brahmins.
Thus, Thass challenged brahminism/casteism
in India by reconstructing and mobilizing a reading public about the
casteless Buddhist history of Indians who were prone to caste
oppression. His writings, petitions, and archives reveal the
castelessness of Tamil Buddhists and their commitment to
a radical political transformation in modern India. Key aspects of the
Tamil Buddhist movement include public mobilization for caste-free
societies, self-representation of oppressed communities, economic
redistribution through affirmative action, and a feminist critique of
caste and patriarchy. Through interdisciplinary methods drawn
from Critical Caste Studies, this monograph uncovers the intellectual
history of Tamil Buddhism and its radical call for vernacular
emancipation. It highlights how Indigenous, Tamil/Indian communities
used Buddhist foundations to resist caste and envision a modern,
casteless future.
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The
number of people in the world with a bank account or money service
provider increased by 2 billion over the past decade. This phenomenon
reflects what Dr. Tyler Girard calls the global financial inclusion
agenda. This agenda emerged in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and
quickly became a prominent feature of global economic governance. 

The
core idea of financial inclusion is that all individuals and businesses
should have access to and use formal financial services, including bank
accounts, payment services, credit, and insurance. Today, the
widespread ability to digitally store and transfer money has impacted
every aspect of our lives. What explains the emergence and evolution of
the global financial inclusion agenda? And what does the politics of
the agenda tell us about the impacts of new technologies on global politics and how ideas become global agendas? 

Drawing
on an original collection of primary documents and interviews with
elites from Ghana, the United Kingdom, the United States, and
Switzerland, Financial Inclusion: How an Idea Became a Global Agenda (Stanford University Press, 2026) traces the global financial inclusion
agenda over time and interrogates its adaptation in specific contexts
and issue areas. Through the concept of participatory ambiguity, Dr.
Girard offers a novel explanation of the agenda that advances important
debates in international relations and international political economy
on the distribution of power and authority in global governance.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 
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A respected voice on technology shows how seemingly simple ads help dismantle democracy and public discourse.

Whether
you’re intentionally shopping or casually browsing social media,
something is following you: ads. Their creators seem to know your income
bracket, politics, age, location, medical conditions, and tastes in
clothing, food, and romantic partners. As advertising firms use
predictive AI to discover your hot buttons and generative AI to push
them, your online world becomes an increasingly bespoke—and
isolated—place. The fervid competition around personalization in digital
marketing has given rise to an ecosystem of advertisers, media outlets,
tech companies, and retailers who monetize your data while threatening
the health of our media, discourse, and sense of community. In this
urgent book, award-winning author Joseph Turow shows how we got here,
and how to change direction.The Problem with Personalization: How Advertisers Learned to Make and Break Us from Ancient Times to the AI Age (University
of Chicago Press, 2026) shatters common beliefs about advertising
history by showing that individualized ads are not new. Today’s
AI-enabled advertisers draw on past aspirations and assumptions about
personalization while weaponizing data in unprecedented ways that drive
social fragmentation and the disappearance of shared social reality.
Informed by interviews with marketing insiders and covering the latest
technology advances, Turow accessibly explains how artificial
intelligence sifts through our data to tag and target us wherever we go
with personalized videos, pictorial billboards, audio messages, and
more. A logical next step for advertiser support is tailored
entertainment and news, a shift that further destroys the common ground
necessary for a functioning democracy.

A must-read for all who care about the future of public discourse, The Problem with Personalization reveals how targeted advertising has altered how we’re seen and what we see in return.
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In May, 1926, nearly three million British workers downed tools to support nearly one million of their countrymen, miners whose employers meant to lengthen their working day and cut their pay. This General Strike brought the country to a grinding halt - which, according to Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, represented a threat not merely to the nation but to the parliamentary system itself. For nine days, the world's best organized working class confronted the world's most powerful, and self-confident, government. And yet the outcome was never in doubt, for Britain's most important trade-union leaders thought as Baldwin did, although they kept saying they were engaged in a wages dispute only. Really, they feared winning even more than they feared losing.

In Nine Days in May: The General Strike of 1926 (Oxford University Press, 2026), award-winning author and historian Jonathan Schneer mines hitherto untapped archival sources to explain why and how the Strike came about, why and how it was waged and countered, why and how it ended. In addition to government reports and TUC reports, he uses reports of undercover agents and spies, "special" constables sworn in for the duration of the Strike, volunteer strike-breakers, Communist agitators, trade-union leaders and rank-and-file members of trade unions; also, of course, the papers of politicians of all parties.

This is a tale of Shakespearian dimensions, replete with tragic heroes and villains and buffoons and opportunists and double-dealers, and contending, evenly matched, forces - both of which meant to do their duty whatever the cost. There may never be another general strike in Britain, but the General Strike of 1926 was one for the ages, illuminating the human condition.

Jonathan Schneer is Professor Emeritus of History at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of New Books Network.
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