Don’t think I’ve mentioned my book on the history of Pasadena-based Charles Pankow Builders, a “design-builder” of many commercial buildings, mostly in LA, SF, and Honolulu, including the MTA tower at Union Station; it is forthcoming from Purdue University Press in January. It combines a study of entrepreneurship and best practices in construction. Check out its page in the Purdue UP catalog.

It’s gotten some good advance praise by industry leaders, as you can see from its Amazon page.

Of closer interest, perhaps, to this group, I also have an essay (Chapter 4: see TOC) on Columbia “money doctor” Carl Shoup’s financial missions to Cuba (in the 1930s) in “The Political Economy of Transnational Tax Reform: The Shoup Mission to Japan in Historical Context,” forthcoming in March 2013 from Cambridge UP.

I’ve now cracked open Why Nations Fail. . . . Will get back to you as I make progress.