Books of the Year 2023

‘This is how economic history should be done’

Peter Brown is Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History, Emeritus at Princeton University and author of Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History (Princeton, 2023)

Meticulously researched and written with flair, Ekaterina Pravilova’s The Ruble: A Political History (Oxford) is the story of how monetary policy, seemingly the most impersonal of forces, resonated throughout an immense and diverse empire touching every aspect, from daily life to high politics and the social imagination. An unequalled introduction to modern Russia, this is how economic history should be done.