Blackford, Mansel G., and K. Austin Kerr. Business Enterprise in American History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986. Discusses the successes and failures of major corporations, along with the development of government regulations. Also examines how business history has changed and progressed.

Blaszczyk, Regina Lee, and Philip B. Scranton, eds. Major Problems in American Business History: Documents and Essays. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. Provides a good background in business history. Combines period documents with essays by leading scholars and industrialists.

Boyce, Gordon, and Simon Ville. The Development of Modern Business. New York: Palgrave, 2002. Looks at how corporations have grown historically, arguing that modern businesspeople can learn from the past. Focuses on a wide variety of business issues.

Chandler, Alfred Dupont. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1977. Timeless work arguing that managers play a direct and vital role in business. Holds that the visible hand of management is more important than the invisible hand of the market. One of the first important histories of business managers.

DiBacco, Thomas V. Made in the U.S.A.: The History of American Business. New York: Harper & Row, 1987. This narrative study discusses American businesspeople over the years. Generally treats the individuals mentioned in a positive way.

Lamoreaux, Naomi R., and Daniel M. G. Raff, eds. Coordination and Information: Historical Perspectives on the Organization of Enterprise. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Examines how information is controlled and how it in turn controls businesses. Discusses historical cases in which information was not available to all competitors and the effects of regulation.

Nace, Ted. Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2003. Examines the changes in corporation law between the founding of the United States and the present. Argues that the U.S. Constitution and the Founders were not as probusiness as the government is now and that corporations prevent adequate regulation.

Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation. New York: Beacon Press, 2001. Looks at the effects of modern corporations and capitalism on the marketplace and society. It also argues for the need for government intervention and regulation, pointing out the dangers of the unregulated corporate system.

Prechel, Harland N. Big Business and the State: Historical Transitions and Corporate Transformation, 1880’s-1990’s. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000. Examines how corporations have changed over the past century, arguing for three waves of development. Also analyzes property rights and how corporations have pressured states into creating favorable environments for them.

Sobel, Robert. The Age of Giant Corporations: A Microeconomic History of American Business, 1914-1992. 3d ed. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993. Details the changes in business, arguing that corporations have played a large role in economic growth. Studies management, marketing, and finance largely, as well as the relationship between politics and business.

Truitt, Wesley B. The Corporation. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006. Examines how corporations have evolved over time. Discusses both practical modern-day concerns about creating and managing a corporation and historical developments. Also suggests some factors that divide long-term corporations from fleeting ones.

Zunz, Oliver. Making America Corporate: 1870-1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Written by a history professor, it focuses on work culture and the rise of business managers rather than high-level executives. Includes a discussion of the role of women in early corporations and stresses the role of opportunity.

Baida, Peter. Poor Richard’s Legacy: American Business Values from Benjamin Franklin to Donald Trump. New York: W. Morrow, 1990. Mixes a study of leading businessmen with the critics of the day. Includes a discussion of each era’s various how-to and self-help business literature. Overall negative view of modern businesspeople.

Klein, Maury. The Change Makers from Carnegie to Gates: How the Great Entrepreneurs Transformed Ideas into Industries. New York: Times Books, 2003. Klein argues that successful (defined here as those who create industries) entrepreneurs have specific skills that most businesspeople lack. Among those are a superb level of dedication to their businesses and a commitment to creating something new.

Leibovich, Mark. The New Imperialists: How Five Restless Kids Grew Up to Virtually Rule Your World. Paramus, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2002. Analyzes the leaders of the technological age, suggesting that their childhoods played a large role in making them the successes that they are. Looks at what drove them to succeed. Includes portraits of Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Larry Ellison.

Lowenstein, Roger. Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist. New York: Main Street Books, 1996. Examines what made Warren Buffett such a successful capitalist investor. Unlike many major figures, Buffett did not build but rather invested. Details Buffett’s success rather than pretending to tell how to invest as successfully as Buffett.

Tedlow, Richard S. The Watson Dynasty: The Fiery Reign and Troubled Legacy of IBM’s Founding Father and Son. New York: HarperBusiness, 2003. Examines the personalities that led International Business Machines (IBM) for more than fifty years. Reveals the flawed tycoons who founded and directed IBM. Discusses how IBM created a cult of its leaders and the company.

Warren, Kenneth. Triumphant Capitalism: Henry Clay Frick and the Industrial Transformation of America. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996. Combines a traditional biography with an examination of the steel industry of the late nineteenth century. It includes Frick’s interactions with Carnegie.

Watts, Steven. The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century. New York: A. A. Knopf, 2005. Examines the man and the myth that were and are Henry Ford. Includes a discussion of his huge successes but also delves into his less known anti-Semitism, controlling tendencies, racism, and antimodernity.

Young, Jeffrey S., and William L. Simon. iCon: Steve Jobs, the Greatest Second Act in the History of Business. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2005. This work examines the rise, fall, and subsequent rise of Jobs. Discusses his success with the iMac and iPod.

Bain, David H. Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad. New York: Viking, 1999. Covers the ordinary workers, well-known titans, and overlooked power brokers who brought about the first railroad. Examines the backroom deals, scandals, and intrigue, as well as the effects on the Native Americans and the workers who built the railroad.

Billstein, Reinhold, et al. Working for the Enemy: Ford, General Motors, and Forced Labor in Germany During the Second World War. New York: Berghahn Books, 2000. Examines the interaction between American corporations and the German government in the World War II era. Also discusses and interviews some of the slave laborers who worked in the plants these corporations built.

Black, Edwin. IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation. New York: Crown Publishers, 2001. Controversially argues that IBM directly gained from the Holocaust in terms of sales and profit, while still keeping its distance legally, and that the Nazis used IBM technology to be efficient in their genocide.

Carlson, W. Bernard. Innovation as a Social Process: Elihu Thomson and the Rise of General Electric, 1870-1900. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Combines a study of Thomson with a look at the modern corporation’s use of research and development, and the success of General Electric. Argues that business, innovation, and marketing are all needed for success.

Cleveland, Harold van B., and Thomas F. Huertas. Citibank, 1812-1970. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985. Outlines the founding and rise of Citibank, one of the largest banks in the United States. Explains Citibank’s relationship to the Great Depression and its effect on the economy since.

Kirsch, Max H. In the Wake of the Giant: Multinational Restructuring and Uneven Development in a New England Community. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. Looks at the effect of large corporations’ restructuring and plant movement on communities. Argues that these small communities are like small countries in their development.

Lane, Bill. Jacked Up: The Inside Story of How Jack Welch Talked GE into Becoming the World’s Greatest Company. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008. Favorable look at Welch and how he ran General Electric. Written by his speechwriter, it suggests that Welch was a master communicator and that is one reason for his success.

Meyer, Stephen. The Five Dollar Day: Labor, Management, and Social Control in the Ford Motor Company, 1908-1921. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981. Examines the early days of the Ford Motor Company and discusses Ford’s desire to control his workforce. Also discusses the rise of business managers and how technology changed throughout the period.

Ortega, Bob. In Sam We Trust: The Untold Story of Sam Walton and How Wal-Mart Is Devouring America. New York: Times Business, 1998. Discusses Walton’s and Wal-Mart’s rise to dominance and the firm’s retailing innovations. Emphasizes Wal-Mart’s destructive practices and ruthless behavior. Should be read with the Slater book.

Slater, Robert. The Wal-Mart Decade: How a New Generation of Leaders Turned Sam Walton’s Legacy into the World’s Number-One Company. New York: Portfolio, 2003. Favorable view of Wal-Mart, written with the help of inside executives. Argues that good leadership turned Walton’s vision into a modern company. Should be read with the Ortega book.

Eichenwald, Kurt. The Informant: A True Story. New York: Broadway Books, 2000. Examines the story of Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and the 1990’s price-fixing case that the U.S. government brought against it. Discusses ADM’s tactics, the role of the whistle-blower (an ADM vice president), why the case developed as it did, and the corruption throughout.

First, Harry. Business Crime: Cases and Materials. Westbury, N.Y.: Foundation Press, 2002. Lists many cases of business crime and discusses how the crimes have changed over time.

McLean, Bethany, and Peter Elkind. The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron. New York: Portfolio, 2003. Examines the reasons for the failure and its resulting effects. Notes the management failures that allowed the disaster.

Markham, Jerry W. A Financial History of Modern U.S. Corporate Scandals: From Enron to Reform. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2005. Looks at a modern period in America’s financial history. Discusses the scandal, the resulting reforms, and some of the market changes that have come about as a result.

Martin, Michael T., and Marilyn Yaquinto. Redress for Historical Injustices in the United States: On Reparations for Slavery, Jim Crow, and Their Legacies. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2007. Wide-ranging book examining the issue of reparations. Discusses some of the companies that benefited from slave labor.

Mills, Daniel Quinn. Wheel, Deal, and Steal: Deceptive Accounting, Deceitful CEOs, and Ineffective Reforms. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: FT/Prentice Hall, 2003. Discusses how deceitful accounting is done, and why the reforms, in the wake of Enron and other scandals, did not create real change.

Rapoport, Nancy B., and Bala G. Dharan. Enron: Corporate Fiascos and Their Implications. New York: Foundation Press, 2004. Lengthy work looks at what went wrong at Enron. Includes contributions from a variety of academics and discussions of ethical and legal issues as well as the obvious financial ones.

Terris, Daniel. Ethics at Work: Creating Virtue in an American Corporation. Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2005. Discusses how ethics has developed over the past decades, and the problems that lax ethics have caused. Surveys the ethics program at Lockheed Martin and outlines its successes and failures.

Weisman, Stewart L. Need and Greed: The Story of the Largest Ponzi Scheme in American History. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1999. Looks at how a small company managed to run a pyramid scheme for a decade without getting caught. A micro-history of an unethical corporation.

Baxter, Maurice G. Henry Clay and the American System. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995. Henry Clay’s American System was the first protective system of the nineteenth century. Details its progress, weaknesses, strengths, and legacy. Also discusses Clay’s political career.

Bruner, Robert F., and Sean D. Carr. The Panic of 1907: Lessons Learned from the Market’s Perfect Storm. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2007. Examines the banking crisis that was partly behind the creation of the Federal Reserve system. Discusses the role of J. P. Morgan in ending the crisis.

Eisner, Marc Allen. From Warfare State to Welfare State: World War I, Compensatory State-Building, and the Limits of the Modern Order. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. Argues that World War I was what created the modern state. Suggests that the associational model adopted during that conflict has limited the government.

Fuhrer, Jeffrey C., and Scott Schuh. Beyond Shocks: What Causes Business Cycles? Boston: Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, 1998. Examines the general phenomena of business crises. Looks at modern-day factors, historical factors, and how things have changed over time. Also discusses the roles of technology and the government.

Gosling, James J. Economics, Politics, and American Public Policy. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2007. Discusses the historical and present relationship between government policy and economics. Highlights the modern-day debates over economic policy in areas such as inflation, the national debt, and trade policy.

Hartcher, Peter. Bubble Man: Alan Greenspan and the Missing Seven Trillion Dollars. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. Argues that Greenspan knew about the overvalued stock market and did nothing. Blames Greenspan for the dot-com crash and the resulting stock market problems of the early twenty-first century. Should be read with the Woodward book.

Klein, Maury. Rainbow’s End: The Crash of 1929. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Argues that a change in the national psyche played a large role in the 1929 crash and resulting Depression. Examines many individuals and the national mood at the time.

Matson, Cathy, ed. The Economy of Early America: Historical Perspectives and New Directions. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006. Combines efforts by several different historians who focus on the early American economy. Discusses a wide variety of issues, from slavery to corporations to agriculture.

Morris, Charles R. Money, Greed, and Risk: Why Financial Crises and Crashes Happen. New York: Times Business, 1999. Examines many of the various financial crises in American history. Argues that overvalued prices are the central issue, not why the crashes happened or why things got so bad.

Richardson, Heather Cox. The Greatest Nation of the Earth: Republican Economic Policies During the Civil War. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997. Looks at the economic efforts undertaken in the U.S. Civil War and details their long-lasting effects. Also discusses the origins of the associated legislation.

Shull, Bernard. The Fourth Branch: The Federal Reserve’s Unlikely Rise to Power and Influence. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2005. Discusses the Federal Reserve’s efforts in past crises and the increasing amount of power held by that body. Relates how the Federal Reserve changed over the years in a symbiotic relationship with politics.

Sinclair, Timothy J. The New Masters of Capital: American Bond Rating Agencies and the Politics of Creditworthiness. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005. Details the power that bond rating agencies have and their interaction with the growing global credit market. Discusses historical trends and the modern-day situation.

Wicker, Elmus. Banking Panics of the Gilded Age. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Examines the 1893 and 1907 crises and their solutions, along with their relationship to the Federal Reserve. Discusses the causes and the role of the national government in these panics.

_______. The Banking Panics of the Great Depression. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Examines the banking crisis of the Great Depression and its relationship to the overall economic woes of the time. Discusses the performance of the Federal Reserve as well.

_______. The Great Debate on Banking Reform: Nelson Aldrich and the Origins of the Fed. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2005. Discusses the late nineteenth century banking crises and the rise of the Federal Reserve Board. Argues that Nelson Aldrich played a larger role than previous historians have acknowledged.

Woodward, Bob. Maestro: Greenspan’s Fed and the American Boom. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000. Proposes that Alan Greenspan, through his leadership of the Federal Reserve Board, played a critical role in leading the economy to a great boom during the 1980’s and 1990’s. Discusses how Greenspan came to make his decisions. Should be read with the Hartcher book.

Aaronson, Susan A. Taking Trade to the Streets: The Lost History of Public Efforts to Shape Globalization. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001. Examines the efforts undertaken in the public sphere, by both critics and mass movements, to shape public policy. Focuses on the interrelationship of trade policy with regulation in general.

Butler, Michael A. Cautious Visionary: Cordell Hull and Trade Reform, 1933-1937. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1998. Examines one of the leading figures in Great Depression diplomacy, holding that Hull was responsible for the movement of the United States toward free trade over the latter part of the twentieth century.

Eckes, Alfred E., and Thomas W. Zeiler. Globalization and the American Century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Discusses the twentieth century, particularly as it relates to trade. Argues that technology and trade combined to allow American dominance. Combines a discussion of diplomacy with that of trade.

Engdahl, William. Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Pluto Press, 2004. Examines the variety of companies that are involved in the international oil trade and their effect on world politics. Argues that the oil companies have played a shaping role in the world.

Gibson, Martha Liebler. Conflict Amid Consensus in American Trade Policy. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2000. Examines the effect of domestic politics on trade policy. Argues that a games-theory approach best explains how trade policy has developed. Focuses on the changes occurring during the 1990’s.

Katznelson, Ira, and Martin Shefter, eds. Shaped by War and Trade: International Influences on American Political Development. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002. Edited volume containing essays by many well-known scholars who survey how politics affects trade. Both domestic politics and international wars are examined as factors.

McCusker, John J., and Kenneth Morgan, eds. The Early Modern Atlantic Economy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Combines economic history with the growing field of Atlantic world history. Discusses the colonies, the international issues, and labor concerns, among many other issues.

Pearson, Charles S. United States Trade Policy: A Work in Progress. Hoboken, N.J.: J. Wiley, 2004. Focuses on the 1980’s and beyond. Discusses the difference between actual trade policy and the various theories that exist. Includes coverage of the various ways policy is negotiated and issues affecting trade, such as labor practices.

Rothgeb, John M. U.S. Trade Policy: Balancing Economic Dreams and Political Realities. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2001. Examines the political issues shaping trade policy. Discusses international issues, corporate pressures, and domestic concerns. Recaps the important historical developments in trade policy.

Satre, Lowell J. Chocolate on Trial: Slavery, Politics, and the Ethics of Business. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005. Examines the Cadbury company and its use of cocoa on slave-labor plantations during the early twentieth century. Also looks at a libel trial that grew out of the slave labor and a critical editorial.

Siekmeier, James F. Aid, Nationalism, and Inter-American Relations: Guatemala, Bolivia, and the United States, 1945-1961. Lewiston, N.Y.: E. Mellen, 1999. Argues that U.S. trade policy toward Latin America was driven by economics, not Cold War ideology. Holds that the United States opposed nationalism there because it wanted to be able to control the local economies, not out of a desire to keep communism out.

Freyer, Tony Allan. Regulating Big Business: Antitrust in Great Britain and America, 1880-1990. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Examines the large corporations that grew up during the late nineteenth century and the two governments’ reaction to them. Discusses the major legal cases and theoretical doctrines that developed.

Goldin, Claudia, and Gary D. Libecap, eds. The Regulated Economy: A Historical Approach to Political Economy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Examines the political starts of economic regulation. Discusses state and local levels as well as federal. Also considers interest groups and the influence of the market.

Hart, David M., ed. The Emergence of Entrepreneurship Policy: Governance, Start-Up, and Growth in the U.S. Knowledge Economy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Argues that government policy can help increase entrepreneurship. Suggests that government and business should work together, rather than opposing one another.

Hartmann, Thom. Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights. Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale, 2004. Examines the power of corporations and the damages that this ascendancy has inflicted. Discusses the growth of corporate might and how corporations have stifled attempts to decrease their strength.

Himmelberg, Robert F. The Rise of Big Business and the Beginnings of Antitrust and Railroad Regulation, 1870-1900. New York: Garland, 1994. Looks at the rise of regulation during the late nineteenth century. Provides a number of more in-depth studies that discuss specific instances involving large railroads and their regulatory environment.

_______, ed. The Monopoly Issue and Antitrust, 1900-1917. New York: Garland, 1994. Examines the Progressive approach toward monopolies. Discusses various court cases and the responses of businesses toward trust busting. Besides discussing national trends, the work also provides case studies of several lesser-known industries.

Hovenkamp, Herbert. Enterprise and American Law, 1836-1937. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991. Examines how the legal system treated businesses in the century before the New Deal’s constitutional revolution of 1937. Discusses the effects of various writings on the legal system’s views toward business and suggests that a general belief in free enterprise led to freedom for the businesses.

Shaffer, Butler D. In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign Against Competition, 1918-1938. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1997. Argues that businesses decided to push for cooperation after World War I, desiring self-regulation. Also holds that many government leaders, including Herbert Hoover, wanted managed cooperation and discusses the effect of these views on the New Deal.

Soule, Edward. Morality and Markets: The Ethics of Government Regulation. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Discusses whether (and when) government regulation is moral and thus should be imposed. Uses classical philosophy, such as that of John Locke, to analyze this area.

Buhle, Paul. Taking Care of Business: Samuel Gompers, George Meany, Lane Kirkland, and the Tragedy of American Labor. New York: Monthly Review, 1999. Examines three presidents of the American Federation of Labor (and later the AFL-CIO), arguing that they moved away from the interests of the working class. Argues that the well-being of white men was protected, while others’ concerns were defeated.

Hattam, Victoria Charlotte. Labor Visions and State Power: The Origins of Business Unionism in the United States. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993. Looks at the start of unionism and why labor played a limited part in politics. Discusses various unions and their stance toward electoral issues.

Lichtenstein, Nelson. State of the Union: A Century of American Labor. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002. Examines the twentieth century history of American unions, arguing that many workers are worse off now than they were in 1900. Discusses the reasons for the decline in union power.

McCartin, Joseph A. Labor’s Great War: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy and the Origins of Modern American Labor Relations, 1912-1921. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Looks at labor relations and issues just before, during, and just after World War I. Although unions did not immediately keep many of the modest gains that they made in the war, McCartin argues that New Deal legislation and attitudes came out of the period.

Montgomery, David. The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865-1925. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Discusses labor relations from the point of view of the worker. Argues that management and owners triumphed against workers in this period.

Puette, William. Through Jaundiced Eyes: How the Media View Organized Labor. Ithaca, N.Y.: ILR Press, 1992. Argues that the negative view of labor in the media has weakened unions. Suggests that the media link labor to crime unfairly and prefer negative stories about unions to positive or fair ones.

Voss, Kim. The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labor and Class Formation in the Nineteenth Century. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993. Holds that the fall of the Knights of Labor doomed American labor to a different path from that followed by labor in Europe.

Zinn, Howard, Robin Kelley, and Dana Frank. Three Strikes: Miners, Musicians, Salesgirls, and the Fighting Spirit of Labor’s Last Century. Boston: Beacon Press, 2001. Three different strikes from the early twentieth century are described, and the collective stories inform about concepts of labor, unionism, business, and gender.

Caldicott, Helen. The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush’s Military-Industrial Complex. New York: New Press, 2004. Discusses the influence of large corporations on U.S. defense spending. Argues that Bush is heavily relying on nuclear weapons in his defense policies.

Coulter, Matthew Ware. The Senate Munitions Inquiry of the 1930’s: Beyond the Merchants of Death. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997. Examines the Nye Committee of the 1930’s and its relationship to the Neutrality Acts and the United States’ isolationism of the period. Holds that the committee performed far better than most accounts have suggested and that it analyzed well the early military-industrial complex.

Franklin, Roger. The Defender: The Story of General Dynamics. New York: Harper & Row, 1986. Provides a history of General Dynamics, one of the larger defense contractors. Discusses its rise and difficulties, and focuses on the military side. Also outlines the leading figures in the company.

Gottlieb, Sanford. Defense Addiction: Can America Kick the Habit? Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997. Examines the massive defense industry and discusses how those companies compete for federal dollars. Analyzes the dependence of this industry on federal funds and the consequences of that dependence.

Himmelberg, Robert F., ed. Government-Business Cooperation, 1945-1964: Corporatism in the Post-war Era. New York: Garland, 1994. Studies the twenty years after World War II and argues that there was a high level of corporatism in the period. Surveys, among other things, the military-industrial complex (and its critics), deficit spending, and fair trade.

Markusen, Ann, Peter Hall, Scott Campbell, and Sabina Deitrick. The Rise of the Gunbelt: The Military Remapping of Industrial America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Discusses how the rise of the military-industrial complex has shaped the population patterns of the United States. Examines the rise of significant defense contractors as well.

Markusen, Ann, and Sean S. Costigan, eds. Arming the Future: A Defense Industry for the Twenty-first Century. New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1999. This examines the contractions in the defense industry that occurred during the 1990’s, along with the government policies that developed then. Discusses the successes and failures of those policies and predictions for the future.

Ndiaye, Pap A. Nylon and Bombs: DuPont and the March of Modern America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. Studies the lives of engineers in DuPont to better understand that industry and that profession. Focuses on the production of nylon and plutonium in this arms effort.

Weir, Gary E. Forged in War: The Naval-Industrial Complex and American Submarine Construction, 1940-1961. Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, 1993. Examines the growth of the submarine industry during and after World War II. Argues that many different factors went into the growth of this industry.

Clark, Terry Nichols, and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds. The Breakdown of Class Politics: A Debate on Post-industrial Stratification. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Argues that social classes are becoming less prominent and less important in the postindustrial era.

Drachman, Virginia G. Enterprising Women: Two Hundred Fifty Years of American Business. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. Examines many successful businesswomen all throughout the existence of the United States. Mixes well-known figures with the relatively obscure.

Green, Venus. Race on the Line: Gender, Labor, and Technology in the Bell System, 1880-1980. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001. Examines the role of telephone operators and their changing jobs throughout this century. Shows how technology, race, and society interacted in this workplace.

Hornstein, Jeffrey M. A Nation of Realtors: A Cultural History of the Twentieth-Century American Middle Class. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005. Outlines the effect of a little-noted business the real estate business on the American middle class. Holds that real estate agents caused people to think of themselves as being middle class.

Hunter, Tera. To ’Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors After the Civil War. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997. Examines working black women inside and outside formal businesses in the period after the Civil War. Looks more at laborers than business.

Johnson, Robert D. The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question of Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003. Uses Portland as a case study in the role of the lower middle class. Argues that this group powered Progressivism and that Progressivism was democratic.

Landry, Bart. Black Working Wives: Pioneers of the American Family Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Discusses how black women of the middle class worked and created the first two-income households. Notes how these women escaped the cult of domesticity while white middle class women were trapped in it.

Nelson, Dana D. National Manhood: Capitalist Citizenship and the Imagined Fraternity of White Men. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998. Argues that the nation came to consider itself as a nation of white men. Suggests that nationalism and business were tied together and were used to limit power to white men.

Strom, Sharon Hartman. Beyond the Typewriter: Gender, Class, and the Origins of Modern American Office Work, 1900-1930. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992. Examines how secretarial work came to be viewed as a female occupation in this period and the social and economic forces behind this change. Also looks at how men maintained their control of the workplace.

Woody, Bette. Black Women in the Workplace: Impacts of Structural Change in the Economy. New York: Greenwood Press, 1992. Discusses how changes in the United States have affected black women. Argues that the rising service economy has affected this group dramatically.