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[Please forward wherever the featured books may be interesting. --PW] 
 
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KRESS SEMINAR, 7 May 98 
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The Kress Seminar in the History of Economic Thought will meet next 
Thursday evening, 7 May, 7:40-10:00pm, in Littauer M16 on the Harvard 
University campus.   
 
This "New Book Session" will feature the authors of two new books: 
 
    Timothy Alborn (Harvard University) 
    Conceiving Companies: Joint-Stock Politics in Victorian England 
    London: Routledge, 1998 (April) 
 
    Perry Mehrling (Barnard College) 
    The Money Interest and the Public Interest: American Monetary  
        Thought, 1920-1970 
    Harvard Economic Studies No. 162.  Harvard University Press, 1997 
 
Each will have a long hour to pitch his project, bark his book, 
trumpet his tome, hawk his et cetera.  Seriously, each plans for 
questions and discussion by the audience; bring your wits, for there 
are no assigned discussants or reviewers on the program. 
 
TIMOTHY ALBORN <[log in to unmask]> teaches history at Harvard 
University.  He has published many papers (several presented here) on 
"the other economists": practitioners such as actuaries, bankers, and 
editors of _The Economist_. 
    _Conceiving Companies_ locates the origins of English joint-stock 
banks and railways in the political culture of voluntarism and 
regionalism that marked the early nineteenth century.  Alborn shows 
where that culture "forced" promoters of new companies and where, to 
the end of the century, they departed from their original political 
moorings in order to adjust to new economic and political pressures. 
 
PERRY MEHRLING <[log in to unmask]> teaches economics at Barnard 
College, including a "Foundations" course for the undergraduate 
economics major which features the work of Smith, Marx, and Keynes!   
He presented his work on Allyn Young here a few years ago. 
    _The Money Interest and the Public Interest_ tells a story of the 
role of money in American democracy, a question associated generally 
with the Progressive tradition and its legacy, and more particularly 
with the institutionalist tradition in American economic thought. 
Mehrling tells the story through the ideas and lives of three 
prominent institutionalists --Allyn Young, Alvin Hansen, and Edward 
Shaw --against the background of revolutionary changes in the monetary 
system, in economic ideas, and in styles of economic explanation. 
 
Dinner 
    Anyone interested in dinner and conversation before the seminar is 
    invited to gather at the Singha House Thai restaurant (1105 Mass. Ave) 
    at 6:00.  The food is great, matched only by the company.  The Singha 
    House is prepared to handle late additions to a party (to about 6:30 
    for dinner or 7:00 for appetizer or drink, given our time constraint). 
 
I hope to see you Thursday, 
 
Paul Wendt 
 
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