Skip to main content

Richard White's Railroaded Attracts Media Attention

We mentioned here earlier Richard White's op-ed piece on high-speed rail, in which he drew on his new work on the transcontinental railroad. The recently published book, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (W. W. Norton, May 2011), has been attracting general media attention. White and the book were featured on the June 13 broadcast of the Diane Rehm Show on NPR, and it has been reviewed for Slate by Donald Worster and by John Steele Gordon for the Wall Street Journal. White himself has now offered his assessment on the Page 99 Test website. Excerpts from the book are available on the Norton site.
    Business historians will be cheered by White's remarks in one of his notes:
Most American historians have relegated the study of corporations to the subfield of business history. Business historians have thrived on the neglect of their colleagues and created an impressive body of literature that should be better integrated into the larger narratives of American and Canadian history (p. 538n8).
BHC members will remember that White participated (with Lizabeth Cohen of Harvard University) in the Presidential Plenary Session at the 2008 annual meeting,  entitled "Putting Business Back in History."
   Update, July 18: The book was reviewed by Michael Kazin in the July 17 New York Times Book Review. Video interviews are also now available: one with David Kennedy on C-Span's Book TV and one with Thom Hartmann on YouTube. An audio interview from NPR's "Morning Edition" has now been posted as well.
   Update, September 4: Robin Einhorn reviews the book for The Nation.

Popular posts from this blog

The Exchange has moved to the BHC's website

  Dear members subscribers of The Exchange   The Exchange, the weblog of the BHC, is now part of our website ( https://thebhc.org ). We migrated the blog to serve our membership and interested parties best since Blogger is discontinuing its email service.   Note that this will be the last message we will send from Blogger .   The Exchange was founded by Pat Denault over a decade ago, and it has become an essential channel for announcements from and about the BHC and from our subscribers and members. Announcements from The Exchange will come up on the News section of our website as they did before. However, if you wish to receive these announcements via email, and you have not done so yet, please subscribe to The Exchange by: Going to our website's homepage ( https://thebhc.org ), s crolling down to the end of the page, and clicking on "Subscribe to the Latest BHC News." Or go to the “News” section of our website's homepage ( https://thebhc.org/ ),   and click on...

The Exchange is changing platforms! Please read to continue receiving our messages [working links]

  Dear subscribers to The Exchange: I am happy to announce that our blog is moving platforms. For almost a decade, the Business History Conference has used Blogger to publish and archive posts. However, in early 2021, the blogging site announced that their email serving service would be terminated. In addition, we noticed that many of our subscribers had stopped receiving the blog’s emails, and our subscription provides very limited reporting. In agreement, the Electronic Media Oversight Committee , web administrator Shane Hamilton, and web editor Paula de la Cruz-Fernández decided to move our web blog from Blogger to our website . We now write to you to request that if you wish to continue receiving announcements from the BHC, please subscribe here: https://thebhc.org/subscribe-exchange   Interested people will be asked to log into their BHC’s account or open one, free. If you have questions, please email The Business History Conference <web-admin [at] thebhc.org>...

Tomorrow: Webinar -- COVID-19, debt monetization, and lessons from war financing

Webinar COVID-19, debt monetization, and lessons from war financing by Harold James With introductions by Markus Brunnermeier, Director of the Princeton Bendheim Center for Finance Event Details Friday, April 24 12:30 PM ET Space is limited, pre-registration is required. A Zoom link will be emailed to those who register early the morning of the event. The Zoom webinar room will open to attendees five minutes before the webinar begins. On Friday, April 24 at 12:30 PM ET, Harold James will join the Princeton Bendheim Center for Finance for a webinar on the history of war financing and lessons for COVID-19. James is Professor of History and International Affairs at Princeton University. The event will begin with a brief discussion by Markus Brunnermeier, Director of the Princeton Bendheim Center for Finance. James will then present. Both Brunnermeier and James will take questions from the audience throughout the event. Visit the COVID-19 webinar series page for all u...