Trevor Jackson, "The Insatiable Machine: How Capitalism Conquered the World" (Norton, 2026)

Podcast: New Books in Economic and Business History (LS 32 · TOP 5% what is this?)Episode: Trevor Jackson, "The Insatiable Machine: How Capitalism Conquered the World" (Norton, 2026)Pub date: 2026-04-28Get Podcast Transcript →powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarizationHow did an economic system that was the result of largely uncoordinated and unplanned individual decisions come to dominate our modern world? This is the core question that my guest, Berkeley economic historian Trevor Jackson, tries to answer in his new book, The Insatiable Machine: How Capitalism Conquered the World (Norton, 2026). Jackson begins with the origins of the global monetary system in the fifteenth century and ends in the early twentieth century, when capitalism faced its most serious challenges from communism and socialism. While wage labor and financial instruments like loans and stocks feel unremarkable today, he reminds us that “it wasn’t always this way.” Capitalism is not natural, timeless, or inevitable. Trevor Jackson is an economic historian at the University of California, Berkeley. He previous book, Impunity and Capitalism: The Afterlives of European Financial Crises, 1690–1830, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. Steven P. Rodriguez is a scholarly publishing professional and historian. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesThe podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from New Books Network, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.