New Books in Economic and Business History

Decades before Miami became Havana USA, a wave of leftist, radical,
working-class women and men from prerevolutionary Cuba crossed the
Florida Straits, made Ybor City the global capital of the Cuban cigar
industry, and established the foundation of latinidad in the
Sunshine State. Located on the eastern edge of Tampa, Ybor City was a
neighborhood of cigar workers and Caribbean revolutionaries who sought
refuge against the shifting tides of international political turmoil
during the early half of the twentieth century.In Ybor City: Crucible of the Latina South
(University of North Carolina Press, 2023), Historian Sarah McNamara
tells the story of immigrant and U.S.-born Latinas/os who organized
strikes, marched against fascism, and criticized U.S. foreign policy.
While many members of the immigrant generation maintained their
dedication to progressive ideals for years to come, those who came of
age in the wake of World War II distanced themselves from leftist
politics amidst the Red Scare and the wrecking ball of urban renewal.
This portrait of the political shifts that defined Ybor City highlights
the underexplored role of women’s leadership within movements for social
and economic justice as it illustrates how people, places, and politics
become who and what they are.
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We were joined by Professor Margaret O’Mara of the University of Washington, who had a front row seat to the Clinton campaign and went on to become an expert in the history of information technology and Silicon Valley.
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Walmart: Made in China
(Stanford University Press, 2026) by Dr. Eileen Otis tells the story of
Walmart's expansion in China, making the case that it is the story of a
major shift in the structure of global capitalism. Walmart, argues Dr.
Otis, is a leading actor in the rise of merchant capitalism, wherein the
role of the merchant has changed from operating at the whim of industrialists, to leveraging
control over large consumer markets. As Walmart's retail business grew
at unprecedented rates across the globe, so too did this business model.

Walmart: Made in China
documents the business's expansion into China not as a tale of seamless
market entry, but as a case of frictions, improvisations, and labor
struggles that reveal deeper transformations in global economic power.
Drawing on years of fieldwork in Walmart stores across China, Dr. Otis
traces an internal supply chain—from warehouse to checkout—where workers
stock, promote, explain, and process goods under varying regimes of
control. These labor
regimes, structured by gender, migration, surveillance, and corporate
rules and culture, as well as managerial oversight, reveal how
capitalist value is realized, and how it can be contested.

At
the heart of her analysis is the rise of a new system—merchant
capitalism—in which control over consumer markets, rather than
production, drives profit. Thus, Walmart: Made in China offers a compelling account of this shift in global capitalism, as it gets made and remade, on the retail floor.

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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How should executives position a company for growth when the geopolitical future is so uncertain? Recent events in Ukraine and the Middle East and tightening restrictions on international trade and investment are reshaping the global business environment. History shows that any such era of change presents both challenges and opportunities. The authors of ⁠Geostrategy by Design: How to Manage Geopolitical Risk in the New Era of Globalization⁠ (Disruption Books, 2024) use  examples, from historical global turning points to recent political disruptions, to illustrate how geostrategy is essential to surviving and succeeding in the next era of globalization.
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Craig Hatkoff has spent four decades at the intersection of innovation, culture-building, and institutional transformation. He pioneered commercial mortgage securitization at Chemical Bank, co-founded the Tribeca Film Festival alongside Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal after 9/11, and .in 2010 co-founded the Disruptor Awards with Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen and Irwin Kula. His latest initiative is Dragon Camp, which provides a methodology for using CGI (Collaborative General Intelligence) as a practice framework for creating a viable human-AI partnership.

In this episode focused on unlocking the potential of AI in a humanist manner, the first order of business is to secure trustworthy information from AI. To that end, Craig discusses a four-stage model for verifying AI’s output. The first element is to leverage output from multiple AI sources, rather than just one, in order to guard against what have been called “AI hallucinations” or “fabrications.” To do so, moves organizations beyond stage 1: single-source vulnerability. Stages 2 through 4 then ramp up from cross-checking via multiple AI models (stage 2), to human intervention to verify (stage 3), culminating in stage 4: where a panel of experts serves as a de facto jury. There is far more than just that 4-stage model, however, in this intriguing episode, as Craig traverses from a love of exploring the power of anomalies as a way to explore insights—to using AI as his “lawyer” in tackling Open AI in court. Building a truth economy that simultaneously allays people’s fears about AI is the ultimate goal here.

Real Transformations: Business Change That Works from the Inside Out is co-hosted by Julie Anixter and Dan Hill, PhD, entrepreneurs with deep experience as corporate change agents, devoted to helping companies make continuous change work for everyone through clarity and connection. To learn about their keynote talks, workshops and labs, check out Real-Transformation.com.
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