Research Guides: History of Business: Getting Started

What's New

The 100 Most Significant Events in American Business by Quentin R. Skrabec
Publication Date: 2012

This reference book examines the top 100 groundbreaking events in the history of American business and illustrates their influence on the labor laws, business practices, and management methodologies of corporate America today. The book explores the origins of successful brands, including Apple, Wal-Mart, and Heinz; demonstrates the successful collaboration between public and private sectors illustrated by the Erie Canal, Hoover Dam, and the interstate highway system; and depicts the commercial impact of major economic events from the Panic of 1857 to the Great Recession of 2010.
The Invention of Enterprise by David S. Landes; William Baumol; Joel Mokyr
Publication Date: 2010

The Invention of Enterprise gathers together leading economic historians to explore the entrepreneur's role in society from antiquity to the present. Addressing social and institutional influences from a historical context, each chapter examines entrepreneurship during a particular period and in an important geographic location. The book chronicles the sweeping history of enterprise in Mesopotamia and Neo-Babylon; carries the reader through the Islamic Middle East; offers insights into the entrepreneurial history of China, Japan, and Colonial India; and describes the crucial role of the entrepreneur in innovative activity in Europe and the United States, from the medieval period to today.

Wall Street west of William Street, Unidentified photographer, Circa 1882

The following sources are useful for scholarly research in a variety of fields and are easily accessible and searchable.

Business Source Complete
A searchable database that offers articles concerning all aspects of business and industry.
EconLit
Indexed bibliography with selected abstracts of the world's economic literature, produced by the American Economic Association.
Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL)
Collection of full-text encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources.
Historical Abstracts
Includes material from over 2,000 scholarly sources and covers events from the 1450s to the present. Excludes the United States and Canada, which are covered in America: History and Life.
America: History and Life
Provides access to citations and abstracts of journal literature, reviews, and dissertations on the history and culture of the U.S. and Canada.
JSTOR
A digital library that boasts more than 1,500 available sources, JSTOR offers archival and current journals, books, and primary sources across a range of disciplines.
Mergent Online
Includes company archives, exchange data, and industry reports.
Oxford Reference
Quick-reference coverage of a broad range of subjects. References works from Oxford University Press in a single cross-searchable resource.
Reference Universe
Searches the content of reference resources owned by UK Libraries, both electronic and print titles, linking you to the pages that contain your search terms in the electronic versions and to the location of the print title in the paper collection while also providing page references.