Joel Mokyr's recent book, The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain, 1700-1850 (Yale University Press, 2010), has been receiving a lot of positive attention. It has been widely reviewed in the press, most notably by Edward Glaeser for The New Republic and by Trevor Butterworth for the Wall Street Journal. From the Butterworth review:
It is impossible to do justice to the subtlety and detail of "The Enlightened Economy"; it is the product of a lifetime of research and thought, and stands as a landmark work of history; . . . its perceptive examination of the birth of economic prosperity holds many arresting insights for our fraught economic times. . . .The book is also reviewed on the blog The Enlightened Economist (Diane Coyle) and by Deirdre McCloskey for History Today. There is an audio interview in which Mokyr discusses the book on Vox; he also writes about the work on The Page 99 Test and has an essay based on the book in City Journal.