Archives de catégorie : History

THE INVISIBLE HAND OF MARIA EDGEWORTH de Jeanna Smialek

The untold story of the nineteenth-century novelist who outearned Jane Austen and wove provocative theories into her fiction—changing economics forever.

THE INVISIBLE HAND OF MARIA EDGEWORTH:
How a Nineteenth-Century Novelist Taught the World Economics
by Jeanna Smialek
Knopf, October2026
(via David Black Agency)

At the end of the eighteenth century, Europe faced revolutions, famine, and war. It was out of this chaos that the field of economics was born—and while that founding has for centuries been attributed almost entirely to men, they were only part of the story.

Maria Edgeworth, known to her contemporaries as “the Great Maria,” was one of the most important authors of the Regency era, envied by Lord Byron, admired by Jane Austen, and read avidly by the British royalty. But she was more than just a novelist and a society fixture: She was also a covert economist, working just after Adam Smith and alongside her friends David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus. As the earliest economists established their philosophies on production and investment, Edgeworth published dozens of stories, many with lessons on finance, society, and trade tucked into their plots. Through her fiction, Edgeworth delivered new ideas to a broader public, stretching the boundaries of what a woman of her time could achieve and captivating an empire in the process.

Here, her tale is told alongside those of the men—and women—who invented a field that would reshape our world. Lively and original, The Invisible Hand of Maria Edgeworth brings this astonishing woman and her world vividly to life and rewrites the origin story of modern economics.

“Whoever thought economics could be such a joy to read? Maria Edgeworth may have written the novels, but Jeanna Smialek’s book brings them—and their world—to life. Take a fascinating voyage with Ricardo, Malthus, and Maria, from the age of the American, French, and Industrial revolutions to the Great Irish Famine, and learn some economics along the way.” —Claudia Goldin, Nobel Prize laureate in Economics and author of Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey Toward Equity

“Revelatory and riveting—an original perspective on the history of economic thought that will change how you see today’s economy, and a pleasure to read from start to finish.” —Jason Furman, Professor of Economics at Harvard University and Former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers

Jeanna Smialek is the Brussels bureau chief at The New York Times. She has covered economic policy in one way or another since 2013, and is the author of Limitless, a book on the history and future of the Federal Reserve. She has previously written for Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Businessweek. A native of Pittsburgh, Smialek has spent most of her career in New York City and Washington, D.C., and now lives in Belgium with her husband.

OPERATION SPARROW de Jason Bell

The first book to tell the full story of one of the greatest yet most unknown operations of WWII.

OPERATION SPARROW:
The Incredible True Story of the Spies Who Tricked Hitler and Won the War
by Jason Bell
Hanover Square Press, Fall 2026
(via Vertical Ink Agency)

Three American special forces parachute into Nazi-allied Hungary in the dead of night, spring 1944. The three-man team is designed to look like the spear’s tip of an Allied invasion to help Hungary extract itself from Hitler’s grasp. The leader of the first Sparrow team is iron-jawed, barrel-chested Florimond Duke: all-American football player, big-time New York advertising executive, and knowing volunteer for a likely suicide mission, but he takes the risk because there is no one better suited for selling the Nazis on a lie. If their plan succeeds, they will be captured by the Germans, and Hitler will be fooled into sending reinforcements far from the coming Allied invasion at Normandy to counter a make-believe invasion instead of the real one. If it fails? German armor will destroy the coming Allied landing in France, and the war could be lost. But against enormous odds, Sparrow’s first stage is completely successful – the Nazis divert twelve divisions to counter the fake invasion. The next stage is Canada’s daring mission to keep Hitler’s forces pinned down – it is like Canada’s invasion at Dieppe, except an unmitigated success. Hitler was completely convinced by the plot, and the Canadian forces made him pay a high price for his mistake. Operation Sparrow was one of the most astoundingly risky and successful missions of WWII, yet its story has not been told, and Jason Bell’s OPERATION SPARROW will be the first book to tell the full story of one of the greatest yet most unknown operations of the war.

Jason Bell, Ph.D. is a professor of philosophy at the University of New Brunswick, Canada. He has served as Fulbright Professor at Göttingen in Germany, and has taught at universities in Belgium, the United States, and Canada.

THE BURIED TEACHESTS d’Annika Blau

An extraordinary true story of family secrets, scandal, and survival.

THE BURIED TEACHESTS
by Annika Blau
on submission
(via The Pilkington Agency)

THE BURIED TEACHESTS follows journalist Annika Blau’s journey after she stumbles upon a secret family legacy. What follows is a remarkable investigation into a family who rose to prominence as purveyors of the famous 4711 cologne, only to be brought down by scandal, internment, and erasure.

A few years ago, Annika discovered that two teachests of mail collected by her great-grandfather had been found during a demolition and auctioned off for a small fortune by strangers. They were lauded as one of the most significant hauls of military mail in Commonwealth history, containing rare correspondence from Sydney’s WW1 prisoner of war camp. But for Annika,they revealed family secrets, silences and shame.

Using the mail as clues, Annika uncovers the riches to rags tale of the relatives who collected it. Charting a path through two world wars and the Great Depression, it’s a story about the family’s rise to Sydney’s high society and their fall to years behind bars as British “war trophies”. At the heart of the story is a mystery: why did Annika’s great-grandfather collect this historic haul only to hide it under some floorboards? Ultimately, she discovers he buried not just the teachests, but the truth of who the family were and where they came from.

At once memoir and investigation, The Buried Teachests sits alongside Wifedom by Anna Funder and The Hare with Amber Eyes as a powerful exploration of identity, loss, and the truths families bury to endure.

Annika Blau is an award-winning journalist, editor and podcaster. She is a reporter for ABC Radio National’s flagship investigative program, Background Briefing. In 2023, she wrote, produced and presented The Buried Teachests: a two-part podcast series for RN’s History Listen program.

WHEN THE STONES SPEAK de Doron Spielman

This is the untold story of the rediscovery of the ancient City of David in Jerusalem and the powerful evidence that proves the Jewish people’s historical and indigenous connection to the Holy Land.

WHEN THE STONES SPEAK:
The Remarkable Discovery of the City of David and What Israel’s Enemies Don’t Want You To Know
by Doron Spielman
Center Street, May 2025
(via Javelin)

Since the founding of Israel in 1948, the Jewish people have faced nine wars against multiple enemies. Yet, beyond the physical conflicts, a deeper ideological battle has been waged against Israel and the Jewish people. This war, crafted by certain Arab leaders and echoed by international organizations like the United Nations, seeks to erase the Jewish people’s ancestral ties to the land, casting them as outsiders, imposters, and “settlers.”

One thing, however, stands in the way of the denialists: the 3,800-year history of the City of David, a site lying just south of the Old City. Archeologists at the site are unearthing evidence that proves the Jewish people’s origin story in the land for over three millennia. Every shovel of dirt reveals that while others may claim to be indigenous to Jerusalem, the Jewish people are, in fact, more indigenous to the Land of Israel than perhaps any other group living anywhere in the world.

This is the timely story of those who transformed City of David from a neglected hilltop village into one of the most important archeological heritage sites in the world, while facing powerful global institutions and terror groups that would do almost anything to keep this truth hidden. Highly relevant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this book foreshadows the events and historical denialism that unfolded with Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

Born and educated in the United States, Doron Spielman moved to Israel in 2000, where he serves as an international spokesperson in the Israel Defense Forces Reserves with the rank of Major. For over two decades, he has worked to transform the City of David into one of the world’s most significant archaeological and historical sites. He is a graduate of the Churchill National Security Program, a Senior Fellow at the Herut Center in Jerusalem, and a graduate of the University of Michigan.

THE ZORG de Siddharth Kara

From Pulitzer finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Cobalt Red: A notorious slave ship incident that led to the abolition of slavery in the UK and sparked the US abolitionist movement.

THE ZORG:
A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery
by Siddharth Kara
St. Martin’s Press, October 2025

In late October 1780, a slave ship set sail from the Netherlands, bound for Africa’s Windward and Gold Coasts, where it would take on its human cargo. The Zorg (a Dutch word meaning both “care” and “worry”) was one of thousands of such ships, but the harrowing events that ensued on its doomed journey were unique.

After reaching Africa, The Zorg was captured by a privateer and came under British command. With a new captain and crew, the ship was crammed with 442 slaves, and departed in 1781 for Jamaica. But a series of unpredictable weather events and mistakes in navigation left the ship drastically off course and running out of food and water. So a proposition was put forth: Save the crew and the most valuable of the slaves―by throwing 140 people, mostly women and children, overboard.

What followed was a fascinating legal drama in England’s highest court that turned the brutal calculus of slavery into front page news. For the first time, concepts such as human rights and morality entered the discourse on slavery, in a notorious case that boiled down to a simple but profound question: Were the Africans on board the Zorg people or cargo?

The case of the Zorg catapulted the nascent anti-slavery movement from a minor evangelical cause to one of the most consequential moral campaigns in history. In this book, Siddharth Kara utilizes primary source research, masterful storytelling, and painstaking investigation to uncover the Zorg’s journey, the lives and fates of the slaves on board, and the mystery of who finally revealed the truth of what happened on the ship.

Siddharth Kara is an author, researcher, and activist on modern slavery. He is a British Academy Global Professor and an Associate Professor of Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery at Nottingham University. Kara has authored several books and reports on slavery and child labor, and he won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize. He has also taught courses on modern slavery at Harvard University, UC Berkeley, and Cornell University. He divides his time between the U.K. and the U.S.