"In Empire of Commerce, Susan Gaunt Stearns takes readers back to a time when there was nothing inevitable about the United States' untrammeled westward expansion. Her work demonstrates the centrality of trade on and along the Mississippi River to the complex development of the political and...

"Carlos Astarita's From Feudalism to Capitalism: Social and Political Change in Castile and Western Europe, 1250-1520 presents for an English-speaking readership a major intervention in a number of debates in Marxist historiography. The work has four thematic nuclei: the socio-political...

The economy of the mysteries -- Perpetual penance and frequent communion -- The spirit of speculation -- Usury redeemed -- The cult of consumption -- Luxury and the origins of the fetish -- Epilogue : encounters with economic theology.