New Books in Economic and Business History

Thomas Schatz returns us to an era when a newly enriched movie industry rediscovered its creative energy, and indie went mainstream without losing its edge.

Between 1989 and 2004, all the old studios either merged with other media giants or were swallowed up by even bigger diversified behemoths, leading to an infusion of money and fast-tracking the digital revolution. Yet even as CGI and piles of cash fueled a new breed of blockbusters—Batman and Titanic, Toy Story and The Lord of the Rings—an indie ethos permeated the industry. And at the crossroads of commodification and aesthetic vision, auteurs ranging from Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino to Sofia Coppola and Ang Lee became household names.

Power Surge: Conglomerate Hollywood and the Studio System's Last Hurrah with Thomas Schatz (U California Press, 2026) traces these trajectories, which increasingly clashed and commingled during the 1990s and early 2000s, resulting in nothing short of a new golden age—and perhaps the last gasp of the century-old studio system.

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Research Triangle Park in North Carolina (RTP) emerged under the unique circumstances of a poor Southern state that needed to find a way to offset the declining industries of tobacco, furniture, and textiles in the 1950s. Through the sustained commitment of nearby universities, business leaders, and local and state officials, state leaders established the largest science and research park in the United States in an area that was nothing but “possums and pines.” Miracle Road: The Story of Research Triangle Park (Duke University Press, 2026) tells this story through the eyes of those at the center of it, like the local black leaders who convinced white officials to desegregate public schools with the justification that it would make the area more appealing to tech companies, or how a chance meeting between the governor and a Danish executive led to North Carolina becoming an epicenter for weight loss drugmakers decades later. Allen Paul and Mack Paul organize the story around major periods in RTP’s growth, showing how RTP came to define the region and the state by the 1990s as well as the major setbacks it encountered in the early 2000s. Breaking down the strategies that led to RTP’s success, like creating new institutions in targeted tech areas to spur activity and factoring quality of life into the regional planning of the area, Miracle Road demonstrates how the story of Research Triangle Park is a fascinating and important case study of urban development in the twenty-first century.

Mack Paul cofounded Morningstar Law Group, where he is a partner. He teaches land use law at North Carolina State University and North Carolina Central University. Mack served as chair of the Greater Triangle Regional Council and has written extensively about the development of the Triangle Region.
Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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What happens when the United States launches an unconventional foreign aid program in the aftermath of a national uprising? In this behind-the-scenes account of the Egyptian-American Enterprise Fund--a private investment fund created by the U.S. Congress to jumpstart Egypt's private sector after the 2011 Egyptian revolution--A Daring Enterprise: A Us-Egyptian Partnership and the Case for Soft Power (American University in Cairo Press, 2026) by James A Harmon, Cornelius Queen, and Mark Warren tells the story of one of the most effective, yet little known, U.S. foreign policy programs today in the Middle East.
Through the firsthand account of the Fund's chairman James Harmon, a veteran investment banker and former Clinton administration official, the authors reveal how a small, U.S.-backed investment fund partnered with Egyptians to spark investment, create jobs, and expand opportunities for women in the Arab world's largest country--all against a backdrop of political instability, anti-Americanism, and Washington dysfunction.
At a time when America's budget deficit is rising and foreign aid is being scaled back, A Daring Enterprise reveals how a new model of foreign assistance can tackle urgent development challenges while delivering real returns for U.S. taxpayers. Most importantly, it is a powerful reminder of the value of foreign aid and why smart foreign investment is key to America's future prosperity.
Cornelius W. Queen is senior vice-president at the Egyptian-American Enterprise Fund. Previously, he worked on the Syrian Crisis Response in Lebanon for a local NGO and before as a Legislative Assistant on Capitol Hill covering trade and foreign policy issues. From 2011-2012, he served as a core staff member for the Carter Center on its international election observation mission for Egypt’s first parliamentary and presidential elections after the 2011 revolution. He is a Middle East Policy Council 40 under 40 awardee. He earned an M.A. in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University and his BA from the Johns Hopkins University.
Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature.

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As affordability crises once limited to coastal cities have spread across the broader United States, the history of home and land ownership has never been more relevant. In Property Values: The Rise and Fall of the American Homeowner (Princeton University Press, September 2026), Dr. Joshua Specht traces how ownership has challenged the nation’s politics and promise from the founding to the present day.

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With his riveting chronicle of the New York Mets baseball team, AM Gittlitz is emerging as a rising star in the field of popular social history. Writing with what the Wall Street Journal calls “the lunatic panache of a utopian manifesto,” Gittlitz weaves together the genealogies of American’s Pastime and the complex histories of race, class, ethnicity, and politics in the nation’s largest city. In this conversation, he recounts the many occasions when the tortuous trajectory of the Mets (and its precursors) collides with the major events of the metropolis and the nation. Civil rights workers, labor organizers, urban master-builders, corrupt politicians, and titans of finance and industry all make cameo appearances in his fascinating account, alongside legendary players from Jackie Robinson to Cleon Jones, Tom Seaver, and Francisco Lindor.
Read the book, Metropolitans: New York Baseball, Class Struggle, and the People's Team, and read the transcript of the interview here.
AM Gittlitz is an organizer and writer living in Ridgewood Queens. He is the author of I Want to Believe: Posadism, UFOs, and Apocalypse Communism and co-host of The Wreckage podcast.
A former journalist and editor, Stephen Hubbell directs the Seven Cities Fellowship Program, part of the Ideas Workshop at the Open Society Foundations.

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