Description
Knowing and understanding Western business history helps clarify the nature of business throughout the world today, along with the public policies that determine much of its current operating environment. Yet rarely do business historians look further back than the European Middle Ages. As Keith Roberts describes in this book, business, markets, and money as we know them took shape in the ancient Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman civilizations. His detailed history underscores the parallels between early and modern business practice. With its broad consideration of business morality, the nature of wealth, the role of finance, and the development of public institutions that shaped business possibilities, Roberts pioneers an absorbing account of a long neglected history.
About the Author
Keith Roberts is a graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and the Harvard Business School's Program in Venture Capital. He has served as president of the Preservation Group, a San Francisco-based real estate firm; Roberts Proprietaries, Inc., a manufacturing and distribution company; and other firms. He is an arbitrator for the Financial Industries Regulatory Authority and in the New York court system. William H. McNeill is a noted world historian and professor emeritus of history at the University of Chicago. The recipient of a National Humanities Medal, he is the author of many books, including The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community, which won a National Book Award for history.
Reviews
Keith Roberts knows his history and is highly informed on the nature of today's comparable instruments and institutions. By placing his story within changing political, social, and cultural settings and by presenting it in a fascinating, well-written way unencumbered by technical jargon, he opens a new field in the discipline of business history. -- Alfred D. Chandler, emeritus, Harvard Business School, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize for history Business history has largely ignored the ancient world, while in fact there is considerable evidence that business played an important in it. This book provides an accessible, well written validation of this argument. -- Karl Moore, Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University An excellent book. Booklist Roberts's well-documented, readable book provides valuable insight into the past and lessons for the present...highly recommended. Choice
Book Information
ISBN 9780231153263
Author Keith Roberts
Format Hardback
Page Count 368
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press