In War, Wine, and Taxes, John Nye debunks the myth that Britain was a free-trade nation during and after the industrial revolution, by revealing how the British used tariffs--notably on French wine--as a mercantilist tool to politically weaken France and to respond to pressure from local brewers...

Worldwide, the indelible image of the Netherlands is the tulip. But the tulip is not alone: flowers of all kinds have long been a key part of both the Dutch identity and the Dutch economy, and in Holland Flowering, Andrew Gebhardt offers a dazzling tour of Dutch flower culture, from the earliest...