• The Tawney Memorial Lectures, sponsored by the Economic History Society: The following Podcasts are available at this web site: -

  (1) Jane Humphries: "Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution" (Tawney Lecture 2010) -

  (2) Bob Allen: "Why Was the Industrial Revolution British?" (Tawney Lecture 2009) -

  (3) Bruce M. S. Campbell: "Nature as Historical Protagonist" (Tawney Lecture 2008) -

  (4) Cormac O' Grada: "The Ripple That Drowns: Twentieth Century Famines as Economic History" (Tawney Lecture 2007).

• Niall Ferguson: the Descent of Finance: Geopolitical Implications of the Crisis: may also interest you. This lecture, given by Prof. Niall Ferguson, Laurence Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, was delivered at Chatham House, London (Eng), on 5 October 2009. He is also a renowned, if rather more popular (and populist) economic historian. Note the pun, based on his recent book: The Ascent of Money.

Other Academic and Political Commentaries: by prominent economists and economic historians

• Paul Krugman: the Conscience of a Liberal. Paul Krugman, Professor of Economics at Princeton University, won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2008 (having earlier, in 1991, won the AEA John Bates Clark Medal in 1991, recognizing him then as the leading economist under 40). In 1999, he became a regular op-ed columnist for the New York Times, the chief source of these 'blog commentaries'. I regard him as one of the world's leading economists, and one whose columns are petinent and important not only for understanding our current economy, but economies in the historical past as well. Personal disclosure: I also regard myself as a liberal (and support the Liberal Party of Canada). This blog is updated frequently by Prof. Krugman.

• An important recent book review that I recommend is the following: Tim Leunig, on Robert Allen's The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (Cambridge, 2009), which book I have already recommended for this course. Bob Allen is a good friend and colleague, whose publications I have mentioned many times in my lectures, even when I do not agree with him fully -- and you can see from this review points of our disagreements. For an alternative view of the British Industrial Revolution, I recommend Joel Mokyr's The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain, 1700 - 1850 (Princeton, 1910), whose review, by Knick Harley, appears in the same EH.NET Book Review Series . Joel is also a good friend and colleague, with whom I also sometimes disagree. One of the highlights of the last World Economic History Congress, held in Utrecht in August 2009, was a debate between Allen and Mokyr on the origins of the Industrial Revolution (I favoured Bob Allen, this time). Such reasonable academic disagreements, based on logic and interpretation of the evidence, is what makes economic history so interesting (to me at least).

• Nobel Prize Winners in Economics: from the first, awarded in 1969.

• The Speeches of Barack Obama: President of the United States of America: the 44th president, inaugurated on 20 January 2009.

• Speeches of President Barack Obama: organized by topics (by the Washington Post).