This book aims to reconstruct the activities of enterprises and individuals over two decades in one developing country (Hungary), within and across four politico-economic domains (agriculture, infrastructure/construction, commerce, and manufacturing), from the initial Stalinist obsession with heavy industry through later reforms paying greater attention to profitable farming and the provision of abundant consumer goods. It provides hundreds of grounded, granular stories for reflection, as ...

This study aims to reconstruct the activities of enterprises and individuals over two decades in one developing country (Hungary), within and across four politico-economic domains (agriculture, infrastructure/construction, commerce, and manufacturing), from the initial Stalinist obsession with heavy industry (Volume 1: Creating the Theft Economy, 1945-1957) through later reforms paying greater attention to profitable farming and the provision of abundant consumer goods (Volume 2: From Chao...

Given the near-silence in technological and business history about post-World War II socialist enterprises, this book gives voice to a generation of Communist China’s managers, entrepreneurs, cadres, and workers from the Liberation to the early 1970s. Using recently-opened online archival resources, it details and assesses the course of technical and organizational experimentation at state-owned, cooperative, and private enterprises as the PRC strove to construct a socialist economy throug...

How repair components of machines reconstructed the distribution networks that connected production to consumption globally.When machines break, entire systems are exposed. Spare Parts tells the global history of replacement components and shows how their absence—or abundance—has shaped warfare, industry, and everyday life in the twentieth century. Philip Scranton traces the production, distribution, and use of spare parts across capitalist, socialist, and...

A vigorous call for rethinking the field of business history.Business history needs a shake-up, Philip Scranton and Patrick Fridenson argue, as many businesses go global and cultural contexts become critical. Reimagining Business History prods practitioners to take new approaches to entrepreneurial intentions, company scale, corporate strategies, local infrastructure, employee well-being, use of resources, and long-term environmental consequences.D...

One would think, that nearly 2,000 years after Paul had written the book of Ephesians, the Church would have exhausted the meanings of its secrets and the subtleties of its form. Not so. Rare is the commentator who deals with the pronoun puzzle of the first two chapters, other than to give a short, shallow mention about two verses. Few are those who explain the mysteries-the secrets-of Paul's gospel explained in the epistle. And why in the world would Paul rejoice that Gentile believers ha...

Journey to and Through the Second Death begins the study where it should-with the first death. Bible believers hold widely diverse opinions on the first death, so a solid biblical definition of death is established before addressing the second death. Technical issues are explained in everyday language.This study has two goals. First, it seeks to bring many unanswered and shadowy questions from the back of the mind into open discussion and resolution:Where are the dead...

Leading historians explore how our ideas of what is attractive are influenced by a broad range of social and economic factors. They force us to reckon with the ways that beauty has been made, bought and sold in modern America.

Scientists have developed a featherless chicken designed to make industrial chicken production more efficient, while specially trained Pacific bottlenose dolphins are being deployed in the Persian Gulf to disarm mines and protect our Navy. Everyone knows Darwin's theory of natural selection, but what about his idea of artificial selection--how humans, not nature, rework natural organisms to meet our needs? Industrializing Organisms brings us to the threshold of the new field of evolutionar...

This original collection abandons culinary nostalgia and the cataloguing of regional cuisines to examine the role of food and food marketing in constructing culture, consumer behavior, and national identity.

This book is a collection of essays about the emergence of routines and, more generally, about getting things organized in firms and in industries in early stages and in transition. These are subjects of the greatest interest to students of entrepreneurship and organizations, as well as to business historians, but the academic literature is thin. The chronological settings of the book's eleven substantive chapters are historical, reaching as far back as the late 1800s right up to the 1990s...

The Russian oil industry—which vies with Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest producer and exporter of oil, providing nearly 12 percent of the global supply—is facing mounting problems that could send shock waves through the Russian economy and worldwide. Wheel of Fortune provides an authoritative account of this vital industry from the last years of communism to its uncertain future. Tracking the interdependence among Russia’s oil industry, politics, and economy, Thane Gustafson s...