Final week of class for my Economic History Class. The topic: Growth in the US. Won't be able to teach it due to Covid but here are the material that we cover (drawing on How the World Became Rich but with lots of stuff taken from others too). amazon.com/How-World-Beca…. 1/n We begin with the colonial economy, its Atlantic orientation, ties with Britain and the Empire. This visible in the correlation between London and Philadelphia wages (source Lindert & Williamson). 2/n

Favorite new books of the year (in no specific order and had to be published in 2019).
1: Escape from Rome by @WalterScheidel. A landmark study characterized by perhaps the most systematic use of the counterfactual approach in long-run history. amazon.com/Escape-Rome-Pr…
1/n 2. Dominion by @holland_tom. Fantastically well-written and fast-paced survey of Christian history that rightly draws attention to how revolutionary Christian morality and attitudes to the family and state were. amazon.com/Dominion-Chris…. 2/n

Run out of time to do a "best books" list like I did last year (medium.com/@MarkKoyama/bo…). But here is a list of new books which stand out in my memory as particularly worthwhile/noteworthy in no particular order. 1. Jurgen Osterhammel Unfabling the East
2. Stephen Platt, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age
3. Ran Abramitzky, The Mystery of the Kibbutz
4. Lisa Blaydes, State of Repression.

Seeing lots of tweets on the "decline" of history as in the US measured in terms of (i) fewer students; (ii) fewer faculty positions; (iii) perceptions that it is not good for job prospects. This seems to be the case but it is puzzling from a non-US perspective. In the UK, history was (and is?) seen as one of the best degrees for entering high powered jobs in law and politics.