Economic, Social, and Environmental

Europe’s Coming of Age

BY LOUKAS TSOUKALIS. Polity, 2022, 246 pp.

In this short, elegant book,Tsoukalis draws on a lifetime of scholarship on European integration to argue that the European Union can exert a moderating influence in a world of polarized great powers. Europe can provide leadership on several global issues, such as data privacy and the green energy transition, where China and the United States are at odds. Yet the EU struggles to reconcile the imperatives of competing in the global economy with the need to fulfill its domestic social contracts. Its member states are burdened by heavy debts and unfavorable demographics. Internal rifts—such as the battle over the United Kingdom’s exit from the EU and disputes between the European Commission and the Polish and Hungarian governments—show that not everyone is happy with the EU’s direction. But to guarantee Europe’s prosperity, liberty, and security, the only way forward is deeper and wider integration. The EU needs a foreign policy focused on its neighborhood and characterized by a combination of engagement and containment. Advancing this policy may require creating a quasi-federal polity freed of the requirements of unanimity that govern—some would say hinder—EU decision-making. A subset of member states may have to move in this direction on their own. Doing so will not be easy, but as Tsoukalis argues, echoing former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, there is no alternative.

The Corporation in the Twentieth Century: The History of American Business Enterprise

BY RICHARD N. LANGLOIS.

Princeton University Press, 2023, 816 pp.

Langlois follows the business historian Alfred Chandler in describing the origins of the modern business enterprise in terms of technological developments. The rise to dominance of the large, multidivisional corporation in the early twentieth century, Langlois shows, reflected the advent of steam power, electricity, and nationwide transportations system. But it