# Publications **Books** - ***Empty Vessel: The Story of the Global Economy in One Barge***. [New York: Knopf, 2025](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/741342/empty-vessel-by-ian-kumekawa/) and [London: John Murray, 2025](https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/ian-kumekawa/empty-vessel/9781399816229/). - Also in translation from HarperCollins in German as [*Beliebige Fracht*](https://www.harpercollins.de/products/beliebige-fracht-die-geschichte-der-globalen-wirtschaft-erzahlt-anhand-eines-schiffs)*,* 2026 Hayakawa Shobo in Japanese as [あるコンテナ船の物語](https://www.hayakawa-online.co.jp/shop/g/g0005210524/), 2026 Volante in Swedish (forthcoming) CITIC in Chinese (simplified) (forthcoming) Book21 in Korean (forthcoming) Kotob Khan in Arabic (forthcoming) Krytyka Polityczna in Polish (forthcoming) Pegasus in Turkish (forthcoming) - [Named a Best Book of 2025 by *The New Yorker*](https://www.newyorker.com/best-books-2025) [Named a Best Book of 2025 by *Kirkus*](https://www.kirkusreviews.com/best-of/2025/nonfiction/books/) [Named the #1 Non-fiction Book of July-August by *Die Zeit,* ZDF, and Deutschlandfunk Kultur](https://bilder.deutschlandfunk.de/72/7d/8a/5a/727d8a5a-f9db-4304-b48f-6c0f3c38e741/sachbuchbestenliste-die-besten-sachbuecher-juli-august-2026-kumekawa-howidy-ofrath-israel-facebook-100.pdf) [Nominated for Science Book of the Year 2026 by *Bild der Wissenschaft*](https://wissenschaft.de/artikel/waehlen-sie-mit-2) - Selected Reviews and Coverage: *Asahi Shimbun* (Japan); AudioFile Magazine (Earphones Award); Bloomberg; *The Book Review* (India); Booklist; CapeTalk Radio (South Africa); C-SPAN; Deutschlandfunk Kultur (Germany); *Financial Times*; *Finanz und Wirtschaft* (Switzerland); *Infobae* (Argentina); *The Information*; *Inside Times* (UK); Kirkus (starred review, Best of 2025); *KulturMag* (Germany) *Library Journal, Literary Review*; *London Review of Books* (forthcoming); *The Nation*; *The Nation Podcast*; *Neue Zürcher Zeitung* (Switzerland); *New York Review of Books*; *New York Times*; *The New Yorker* (Best of 2025); *The Nikkei* (Japan); ÖRF (Austria); *Okinawa Times* (Japan); *Publishers Weekly*; *The Spectator*; *T-online* (Germany); *Die Tageszeitung* (Germany); *Tribune Magazine*; *Wall Street Journal; Die Wirtschaft* (Austria); *Die Zeit* (Germany, Best of July-August 2026) - ***The Business State: Big Business, Empire, and the 20th Century British State**.* Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2027, forthcoming. - [***The First Serious Optimist: A.C. Pigou and the Birth of Welfare Economics***](https://press.princeton.edu/titles/11020.html)*.* Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017. - Winner of the Joseph J. Spengler Best Book [Prize](https://historyofeconomics.org/awards-and-honors/spengler-book-prize/) from the History and Economics Society - Selected Reviews: [*Alternatives Economiques*](https://www.alternatives-economiques.fr/pigou-lhistoire-dune-vie/00081384); “[La librairie de l’éco](http://bfmbusiness.bfmtv.com/mediaplayer/replay/la-librairie-de-l-eco/)”; [*Contributions to Political Economy*](https://academic.oup.com/cpe/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/cpe/bzy003/4994221); [*Economic History Review*](http://www.ehs.org.uk/app/journal/issue/10.1111/ehr.2018.71.issue-2); [*Finance and Development*](http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2017/06/book2.htm); *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung*; *History of Economic Ideas*; *Journal of Consumer Policy*; [*Journal of Economic Literature*](https://www-aeaweb-org/articles?id=10.1257/jel.56.3.1163); [*Law and Society*](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jols.12066/full); [*Open Magazine*](http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/books/the-arc-of-optimism); [*Public Choice*](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11127-017-0471-7); [*The Times Literary Supplement*](https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/private/arthur-cecil-pigou-optimist-economics-tax/); [The Enlightened Economist](http://www.enlightenmenteconomics.com/blog/index.php/2017/07/21/) **Book Chapters and Journal Articles** - “Between Empire and Nation-State: Flags of Convenience and the Unit of the Offshore,” in preparation. - “Expansion and Protection: Interwar British Business Elites and the Empire,” in *Business Elites and the Organization of Capitalism 1900-1945: Creators of Democracy, Captains of Industry, or Extractors of Value?*, ed. Patrick Fridenson and Knut Sogner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). - “A Few Millions were Neither Here nor There: Empire, Exports, and the British Business-State after World War I,” in preparation*.* - “[Black Economists and the Great Migration: Considering the Meaning of the Federal Division of Negro Economics](https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479244324000453),” *Modern Intellectual History*, forthcoming in print; online (2024). - “[Measuring the Cost of Pollution: Economic Life, Economic Theory and the Origins of Environmental Economics](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/730038),” *Journal of Modern History*, *Journal of Modern History* 96, no. 2 (June 2024): 332-361. - Winner of the Craufurd Goodwin Prize for the Best Article in the History of Economics (2025) - "[Imperial Schemes: Empire and the British Business-State](https://www.doi.org/10.1017/eso.2022.41)," *Enterprise & Society* 23, no. 4 (December 2022): 928-937. - “Historical Network Analysis” in John Scott, Peter Carrington, John McLevey, eds., *SAGE Handbook on Social Network Analysis* (London: Sage Publishers, 2023). - “[Meat and Economic Expertise in the British Imperial State During World War I](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/historical-journal/article/meat-and-economic-expertise-in-the-british-imperial-state-during-the-first-world-war/C35068E55815B81934D1A7D8B6C2707A),” *The Historical Journal* 62, no. 1 (March 2019): 171-194. **Reviews** - Review of *The Rulers* by Cecilia Rikap, *Critical AI*, forthcoming. - Review of *The City's Defense* by Robert Yee, *European Journal of Economic History*, forthcoming. - Review of *Offshore* by Brooke Harrington, *Journal of Interdisciplinary History*, forthcoming. - [Review of *The Measure of Progress* by Diane Coyle and *The Measure of Economies* edited by Marshall Reinsdorf and Louise Sheiner ](https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-12303328)(Review Essay), *History of Political Economy* 58, no. 2 (2026): 301-307. - “[Lessons from Environmental and Economic Crises](https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2023.54),” (Review Essay), *Enterprise and Society* 25, no. 2 (June 2024). - [Review of *Free Market: The History of an Idea* by Jacob Soll](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01916599.2023.2171467), *History of European Ideas* 49, no. 2 (2023). - [“Reconsidering the History of Political Economy”](https://www.doi.org/10.1017/S147924432200049X) (Review Essay), *Modern Intellectual History* 20, no. 3 (September 2023). - [Review of A.C. Pigou and the Marshallian Thought Style by Karen Knight](https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-8816673), *History of Political Economy* 53, no. 1 (February 2021): 166-167. **Other Selected Publications** - “[Power Hangs by a Literal Thread](https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/power-hangs-by-a-literal-thread/)” (Review of *Web Beneath the Waves* by Samanth Subramanian, *Los Angeles Review of Books*, October, 2025. - “Sean Vegezzi’s VCBC Archive,” in *Storefront for Art and Architecture Reader*, forthcoming. - "[Reading A.C. Pigou](https://www.res.org.uk/resources-page/res-quarterly-newsletter-october-2022.html)," *Royal Economic Society Quarterly Newsletter*, October 2022. - “[Imperial Legacies and World Heritage](https://histecon.fas.harvard.edu/climate-loss/peat/index.html),” Visualizing Climate and Loss, Center for History and Economics, 2021. - "[We Need to Revisit the Idea of Pigou Wealth Tax](https://www.ft.com/content/fe3abaa6-a5ab-11ea-a27c-b8aa85e36b7e)," *Financial Times*, June 8, 2020. - with Charles S. Maier, "Responding to COVID-19: Think through the Analogy of War," Safra Center COVID-19 Rapid Response White Paper 10 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Safra Center, April 2020), [https://ethics.harvard.edu/war-analogy.](https://ethics.harvard.edu/war-analogy) - “Economists at Cambridge,” Visualizing Historical Networks, 2013, .