A History of the Social Sciences in 101 Books offers a reflective look at the evolution of the social sciences from 1947 to 2016. The book is simultaneously a collection of contemporary book reviews, a chronology of important intellectual landmarks in the social sciences, a history of how its constituent disciplines sometimes ignored and sometimes learned from each other, and a revelation about the intellectual circumstances of French social scientific scholarship toward the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century. This retrospective’s qualitative focus provides a valuable, if selective, insight into French academic thought and invites readers, especially quantitative scholars, to engage critically with its inclusions and notable omissions (such as minimal representation of female authors and studies in economics and the complete omission of historical demography).

Before the advent of cheap, mass-produced (and largely cotton) textiles during the classic period of the Industrial Revolution (late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries), clothing was relatively expensive and, because of the care it received, remarkably durable. Textiles often represented a substantial portion of the total assets held by early modern households. Drawing on over 900 after-death inventories of poor and lower middling Amsterdam burgher families registered by the Municipal Orphanage between 1740 and 1782, this article examines the role played by textiles as a “store of value.” The retention of clothing designated as “old,” “very old,” or “old and poor” reveals understandings of the worth of possessions. Indeed, textile goods were for many poor households their main store of wealth, comprising a significant portion of their accumulated assets over a lifetime. Textile goods were also a key access point to new kinds of consumption (new fabrics sometimes from exotic locations and made up in new styles) despite the relative poverty of the population leaving children to the Municipal Orphanage, suggesting that such items also carried important symbolic value not easily captured by their financial value alone.

Money, a ubiquitous yet enigmatic concept, defies clear definition despite its long historical use. Naismith’s Making Money in the Early Middle Ages reveals the complexity of early medieval monetary systems, identifying three important developments in their history (the decline of Roman imperial money, the shift from gold currency in favor of silver, and the gradual rise in coin usage over the long Middle Ages). In exploring money’s symbolic and practical characteristics, the book illustrates money’s impact on social relations and hierarchies, opening the door for the human questions that carry implications for justice. By integrating distinct methodologies, the author presents a nuanced understanding of money’s significance in shaping medieval societies, offering an exemplary model for interdisciplinary scholarship.

In The WEIRDest People in the World , Henrich offers something of a big-think, global, social-science history that covers everything from psychology experiments to anthropological narrative, economic argumentation, and kinship studies, all grounded in a purported history of religious and family law. The book seeks to persuade that the West is cognitively different from the rest of the world and that its uniqueness explains every fundamental aspect of its modern trajectory—its wealth and education distributions, the progress and spread of its innovations, the presence or absence of trust outside its local communities, its formal institutions of democratic governance, and its beliefs about fairness and equality. Even more important for historically oriented readers, the book seeks to uncover how this major cognitive development emerged. The quantitative methods that the book employs to support its sweeping claims, however, are flawed, and its version of European church- and family-law history is inconsistent with the consensus view of specialist historians.

An economics that refuses to engage with the lessons of history or to engage in a dialogue about justice, values, and ethics risks either wishing itself back to a past that never existed, losing sight of the multiplicity of human interactions across interconnected spheres of life, or sacrificing genuine results to clever but inert methods and models. An economics that is sensitive to the complexity of the past, conducive to beneficial social conditions in the present, or even just an economic history with a viable future will depend fundamentally on the commitment to hold two disciplinary inclinations in fruitful and balanced tension. Economists and historians should continue to talk to each other regularly, with open minds, as many already do, and as the fifty-year existence of the JIH attests.

The seventeenth century, broadly conceived, marks an important turning point in the history of European population movements. Long cycles characterized, first, by population expansion and subsequently by mortality contractions due to famine or disease held long-term population growth largely in check. The subsistence and mortality crises of the middle decades of the seventeenth century and the fundamental shift in the capacity of the European population to grow after 1750 together suggest that the case for a “general crisis of the seventeenth century” has strong demographic support.