Sven Beckert’s Chronicle of Capitalism’s Long Rise

Capitalism is a global economic system, so a proper chronicle of its rise to dominance has to examine the entire world, as historian Sven Beckert does in his massive new book, Capitalism: A Global History.

Review of Capitalism: A Global History by Sven Beckert (New York: Penguin Press, 2025)

Sven Beckert’s doorstop of a book is supremely ambitious, an insightful and well-illustrated history by the Harvard historian who has been a pioneer in the creation of new narratives exploring how an ever-changing capitalism has been a socially and culturally rooted phenomena. At well over a thousand pages, Beckert’s volume offers a synthesis and occasional recasting of almost everything we have learned about the history of capitalism, and not just in the closely studied societies bordering the North