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How an esoteric economic theory—and its most devout believers—changed the world forever.

In the modern economy, stock price is king. The value of a corporation is measured in how it enriches its shareholders, even when doing so subtracts from long-term growth or social good. Greed, in the last half-century of corporate practice, has become very good. Company Men is a sweeping intellectual history of how shareholder value rose from the lesser-known edges of academic theory to the vanguard of corporate practice.

Historian Sean Delehanty marshals archival resources to reveal how a group of motivated consultants, activist investors, and academic economists successfully branded shareholder value as the antidote to problems of management and economic stagnation in the 1970s. In their success, they created a class of well-heeled managers who executed shareholder-value theory as an everyday practice—and at the expense of most everything else. Delehanty’s history of the modern American corporation is a sobering account of the business regime that would rule the world and produce no shortage of regrets—even amongst those who championed it. Company Men is intellectual history at its most vital, offering a surprising origin story of our economy’s discontents.

Reveals the deep, historical roots of public distrust in former mining areas in the US, shedding new light on the corrosive feedback loops that persist today.

In Company Towns, Elizabeth Mitchell Elder examines the long-lasting political legacies of mining-company dominance in the Midwest and Appalachia. While the economic consequences of deindustrialization are well-known, Elder shifts the focus to a more insidious problem: the political dysfunction that took root long before the mines shut down.

Drawing on historical and administrative data, Elder shows that the coal industry hindered the growth of local government capacity in the places where it was dominant. Mining companies also engaged in outright corruption to shape local governments, practices which local elites then carried forward. When mining companies withdrew, they left behind not just economic decline, but local governments ill-equipped to govern.

These patterns have had enduring consequences for public life. Elder shows how these historical experiences have fueled a broader cynicism toward government, in which citizens expect little from public institutions and doubt the usefulness of elections. Company Towns underscores the consequences of corporate dominance for state capacity, public opinion, and democratic accountability today.

The story of Roman Hellenism—defined as the imitation or adoption of something Greek by those subject to or operating under Roman power—begins not with Roman incursions into the Greek mainland, but in Italy, where our most plentiful and spectacular surviving evidence is concentrated. Think of the architecture of the Roman capital, the Campanian towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum buried by Vesuvius, and the Hellenic culture of the Etruscans. Perhaps “everybody knows” that Rome adapted Greek culture in a steadily more “sophisticated” way as its prosperity and might increased. This volume, however, argues that the assumption of smooth continuity, let alone steady “improvement,” in any aspect of Roman Hellenism can blind us to important aspects of what Roman Hellenism really is and how it functions in a given context.

Explores what we actually see, touch, and experience when looking at art

Typically, art history is an enterprise of recovery—of searching out the provenance, the original intentions, the physical setting, and historical conditions behind a work of art. The essays in Compelling Visuality address some of the other questions that are less frequently asked—and, in doing so, show how much is to be learned and gained by going beyond the traditional approaches of art history.

An examination of archaeology in Jordan and Palestine, Competitive Archaeology in Jordan explores how antiquities have been used to build narratives and national identities. Tracing Jordanian history, and the importance of Jerusalem within that history, Corbett analyzes how both foreign and indigenous powers have engaged in a competition over ownership of antiquities and the power to craft history and geography based on archaeological artifacts. She begins with the Ottoman and British Empires—under whose rule the institutions and borders of modern Jordan began to take shape—asking how they used antiquities in varying ways to advance their imperial projects. Corbett continues through the Mandate era and the era of independence of an expanded Hashemite Kingdom, examining how the Hashemites and other factions, both within and beyond Jordan, have tried to define national identity by drawing upon antiquities.

Competitive Archaeology in Jordan traces a complex history through the lens of archaeology’s power as a modern science to create and give value to spaces, artifacts, peoples, narratives, and academic disciplines. It thus considers the role of archaeology in realizing Jordan’s modernity—drawing its map; delineating sacred and secular spaces; validating taxonomies of citizens; justifying legal frameworks and institutions of state; determining logos of the nation for display on stamps, currency, and in museums; and writing history. Framing Jordan’s history in this way, Corbett illustrates the manipulation of archaeology by governments, institutions, and individuals to craft narratives, draw borders, and create national identities.

There are thousands of historic sites across Pennsylvania. The question of whose memories, what histories, and what local heritage deserve preservation has animated historians and communities for centuries. The editors and contributors to Complex Commonwealth provide a collection of accessible essays about public history in Pennsylvania that show how we have commemorated and preserved the state’s material culture, museums, monuments and memorials, parks, archives, libraries, and historic sites over centuries.

Chapters examine the Homestead Steel Strike, the Carlisle Indian School’s Digital Resource Center, and African American cemeteries and burial grounds, among other case studies. The methodologies these public historians use are as diverse as the various histories of labor, gender, religion, and race. It is by shedding light on these underseen histories that Complex Commonwealth affirms the importance of state and regional history to everyday Pennsylvanians.

Complex Commonwealth emphasizes the importance of place and space in shaping how we know what we know about the past and how that collectively shapes our future.

Contributors: Barbara Barksdale, Zachary L. Brodt, Steven Burg, Mary Catherine Foltz, Kelly C. George, James Gerencser, Alexandra Acri Godfrey, Kris Lowrey, Devin C. Manzullo-Thomas, Carol W. Smith, Frank Vitale IV, and the editors

Critical and iconoclastic, Comrade or Brother? traces the history of the British Labour Movement from its beginnings at the onset of industrialisation through its development within a capitalist society, up to the end of the twentieth-century. Written by a leading activist in the labour movement, the book redresses the balance in much labour history writing. It examines the place of women and the influence of racism and sexism as well as providing a critical analysis of the rival ideologies which played a role in the uneven development of the labour movement.

Holding the Hill of Angels: A Marine’s Fight for Survival at the DMZ.

Throughout much of 1967, a remote United States Marine firebase only two miles from the demilitarized zone (DMZ) captured the attention of the world’s media. That artillery-scarred outpost was the linchpin of the so-called McNamara Line intended to deter incursions into South Vietnam by the North Vietnamese Army. As such, the fighting along this territory was particularly intense and bloody, and the body count rose daily.

Con Thien combines James P. Coan’s personal experiences with information taken from archives, interviews with battle participants, and official documents to construct a powerful story of the daily life and combat on the red clay bulls-eye known as "The Hill of Angels." As a tank platoon leader in Alpha Company, 3d Tank Battalion, 3d Marine Division, Coan was stationed at Con Thien for eight months during his 1967-68 service in Vietnam and witnessed much of the carnage.

Con Thien was heavily bombarded by enemy artillery with impunity because it was located in politically sensitive territory and the U.S. government would not permit direct armed response from Marine tanks. Coan, like many other soldiers, began to feel as though the government was as much the enemy as the NVA, yet he continued to fight for his country with all that he had. In his riveting memoir, Coan depicts the hardships of life in the DMZ and the ineffectiveness of much of the U.S. military effort in Vietnam.
 

During the height of the civil rights movement, Blacks were among the most liberal Americans. Since the 1970s, however, increasing representation in national, state, and local government has brought about a more centrist outlook among Black political leaders.

Focusing on the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), Katherine Tate studies the ways in which the nation’s most prominent group of Black legislators has developed politically. Organized in 1971, the CBC set out to increase the influence of Black legislators. Indeed, over the past four decades, they have made progress toward the goal of becoming recognized players within Congress. And yet, Tate argues, their incorporation is transforming their policy preferences. Since the Clinton Administration, CBC members—the majority of whom are Democrats—have been less willing to oppose openly congressional party leaders and both Republican and Democratic presidents. Tate documents this transformation with a statistical analysis of Black roll-call votes, using the important Poole-Rosenthal scores from 1977 to 2010. While growing partisanship has affected Congress as a whole, not just minority caucuses, Tate warns that incorporation may mute the independent voice of Black political leaders.

Focusing on the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), Katherine Tate studies the ways in which the nation’s most prominent group of Black legislators has developed politically. Organized in 1971, the CBC set out to increase the influence of Black legislators. Indeed, over the past four decades, they have made progress toward the goal of becoming recognized players within Congress. And yet, Tate argues, their incorporation is transforming their policy preferences. Since the Clinton Administration, CBC members—the majority of whom are Democrats—have been less willing to oppose openly congressional party leaders and both Republican and Democratic presidents. Tate documents this transformation with a statistical analysis of Black roll-call votes, using the important Poole-Rosenthal scores from 1977 to 2010. While growing partisanship has affected Congress as a whole, not just minority caucuses, Tate warns that incorporation may mute the independent voice of Black political leaders.