1Julien Gradoz: The idea for this interview arose when I realized there’s virtually no research specifically dedicated to book reviews in the history of economics—or even in economics more broadly. This absence gives the impression that book reviews are seen as secondary publications, not particularly worthy of scholarly attention. Do you share that impression? In your view, why is it important for journals to include book review sections, especially in journals specialized in the history of economics?
2Steven G. Medema: I happen to think book reviews are a form of scholarship. That’s not to say every book review is written with that intention, or that every one makes a scholarly contribution—but as a genre, they certainly can be. At the most basic level, reviews help readers become aware of new books and their contents, which is valuable in itself. That said, in today’s world, notably with the Internet, that function alone may not justify dedicating journal space or scholarly time to reviews, especially not the kind that simply go, “In chapter one, the author says this; in chapter two...” That sort of review provides little useful information. Done well, though, a book review can absolutely be a scholarly contribution. It situates a book in a broader context—whether that’s the literature, the field at a particular moment, or something else. And that contextualization is where its real value lies.
Now, in the history of economics, books genuinely matter. They’re not just, as they often are in economics more broadly, summaries of a field. In our discipline, books can advance the field—sometimes more so than a set of journal articles of comparable (combined) length. The long format allows for things you just can’t do in an article, notably painting bigger pictures. So, because books matter, reviews of them matter too. Authors get feedback during the manuscript review stage, of course, but published reviews add another layer—evaluating the finished product. They help both potential readers and fellow scholars understand where a book fits, what its strengths and limitations are. I think that additional layer is very important.
3Julien Gradoz: In the special issue commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the History of Economics Society (HES), your retrospective on your time as JHET [Journal of the History of Economic Thought] editor (Medema, 2024) mentions your decision to take on both editorial roles—book review editor and editor-in-chief—even though those positions had traditionally been separate. You suggested this was a way to better understand what was happening in the profession. Why did you see that as particularly important? Were there additional practical or editorial considerations?
4Steven G. Medema: One reason might be Warren J. Samuels. He had a huge influence on me—I was his student—and he did the same thing with his Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology. He always included a massive book review section in each issue, often featuring multiple reviews of the same book—what you might call “review symposia.” And he handled all of that himself. So that was a natural model for me. There were other models, of course. Don Moggridge had been the book review editor for HOPE [History of Political Economy] for quite a while by the time I took over at JHET, and Paul Trescott had done the book reviews for JHET. But the approach I really gravitated toward was the one I saw in Warren.
Another piece of it is that I was young when I became editor of JHET. I was appointed in 1998, nine years out of graduate school—I finished my PhD in 1989—and I hadn’t even started attending HES meetings until, I think, 1994, at Babson College. So I was still relatively new to the institutional side of the field. I didn’t know a ton of people. When you don’t have a deep Rolodex, it’s not easy to come up with a list of twenty folks who might serve as book review editor. I’m sure I could have asked the editorial board for suggestions, and I would’ve gotten good ones—but basically, I wanted to do it myself. Partly because I thought it would be good for me.
If someone wants to call that selfish, so be it. But I love books. Look around my office—I love books [laughs]. Of course, the books didn’t stay with me; they went out to reviewers. But in a field where, like I said earlier, books are such an important part of the scholarship, keeping up with what’s being published is really valuable. It helped me as a scholar, but even more importantly, it helped me as an editor. Knowing what’s out there—what’s hot in the field, what people are working on—that’s crucial. You can see some of that through manuscript submissions, but you also see it through books and who’s writing them. So for me, it was a way to stay in touch with the field—both for my own development as a scholar, and for my growth as an editor.
5Julien Gradoz: At HOPE, you held solely the role of book review editor. Has that division of labor always been the practice at HOPE? From your perspective, what are the advantages and disadvantages of keeping those roles separate within a journal? And in your view, what essential qualities should a book review editor have?
6Steven G. Medema: The biggest advantage of separating the roles is that you get two—potentially very different—perspectives. Editors play a major role in shaping what gets published in a journal. And if the journal starts to reflect only the editor’s research interests, that’s a problem. I mean, during my ten years editing JHET, I don’t think I published anything on Coase. The point is, having different people involved increases the variety of voices and topics, and that’s a good thing. If you’ve got a good book review editor, there’s no strong reason not to separate the role from that of the main editor. And being an economist, I’d say division of labor is probably a good idea anyway, right?
As for what makes a good book review editor, I think the most important thing is having very catholic tastes—with a lowercase “c.” You need to be interested in a wide range of topics and be able to see value in lots of different kinds of work. We all have personal preferences—particular topics, historiographical approaches—but if you let those tastes dominate the review section, that’s a problem. Especially in a field like ours. Sure, we’ve got a number of journals, and each has its own book review editor, so there’s some built-in diversity. But journals like JHET, HOPE, EJHET [The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought], History of Economic Ideas—they’re all meant to serve the field broadly. They aren’t like The New Yorker, namely literary magazines where the editor might have a very particular voice or agenda. And that’s fine—for The New Yorker. But in our case, the goal is to support the entire field.
Therefore, when it comes to choosing which books to review, the attitude shouldn’t be, “Well, this kind of scholarship isn’t to my taste.” The point is to highlight good and interesting work, regardless of whether it aligns with your preferences. Beyond that, there are softer, more human elements to the role. I don’t mean doing favors for friends, but being aware of things. Maybe a young scholar could benefit from having their book reviewed—it might help their tenure file, or just give their work some visibility. Or maybe a senior scholar, someone who’s made major contributions and is nearing retirement, deserves recognition. These things matter.
So, I think it’s important for a book review editor to be connected to the field—not a recluse. You can be a great scholar and know which books are worth reading, but staying attuned to the pulse of the field helps. Because at the margins, there are things a book review editor can do to support people and the field more broadly. Not by playing favorites, but by being mindful of where a review might really make a difference.
7Julien Gradoz: You succeeded Paul Trescott at the JHET and Don Moggridge at HOPE. How did those editorial transitions unfold? Were they formally structured? Did your predecessors offer any specific advice? And would you describe your approach as one of continuity or a departure from theirs?
8Steven G. Medema: No, I never really had conversations with either Paul or Don about the transitions. The processes themselves were fairly seamless—arrangements were made so that books and notifications about books started flowing to me—but there wasn’t much direct interaction. I knew Moggridge well—he was a terrific guy—and I’m sure if I’d reached out for advice, he would’ve gladly offered some. But by the time I took over at HOPE, I’d already spent ten years handling reviews at JHET, so I felt reasonably comfortable stepping in. I don’t think I saw myself as doing anything overtly different. When Kevin [Hoover] approached me about taking on the book review role at HOPE, I agreed, and I’d always appreciated the reviews Don had commissioned—he did a fantastic job for many years.
That said, when I took over at JHET, I was a bit more intentional about expanding the scope of what we covered. There were a lot of interesting things happening both within the field and on its periphery. I tried to bring in some of that broader work. I remember, for example, a review of a book by Mary Poovey (Poovey, 1998); a review by Philip Mirowski (2000)—there were historians from different backgrounds engaging with the history of economics, and I wanted to bring some of that into JHET. I had big ambitions to do more of that, honestly. But the challenge is keeping up with that literature—it’s tough. So I made some moves in that direction, probably not as many as I’d hoped, but I gave it a try.
9Julien Gradoz: What criteria guide your selection of books for review? Do you consult publisher catalogs, or do you only consider books that are sent directly to you?
10Steven G. Medema: When I started out, the Internet was still pretty new. We were still getting submissions in hard copy around 1998 or 1999. So there were only a handful of ways to find out about new books. One way was that publishers would send books directly to the journal—there was a list they maintained, and books would just show up in the mailbox. That was always kind of fun—every day felt like Christmas if you love books [laughs]. Unfortunately, you then have to turn around and send them back out to reviewers, but still, it was fun while it lasted. Then there were the catalogs. Publishers would mail them out, and you’d pore over them. I also used to haunt the book displays at conferences—not just at HES meetings, but more broadly, especially at the Allied Social Science Associations meetings. The book exhibit there used to be huge. And of course, there was word of mouth. People would tell you, “Hey, I’ve got a book coming out”—they’d catch you at a conference, or send you an email (because, yes, we did have email by then). Nowadays, that has changed. You get email notifications, and you can browse publisher catalogs online very easily. So the idea is to keep your eyes open for what’s new and interesting. You can’t review everything, of course. Some publishers in our field have, at various times, been producing books at a pretty fast clip. There’s just no way to keep up with it all. So the guiding principle, at least for me, was always: What will interest our readers? I tended to avoid edited volumes—they’re just tough to review well. Not that we never reviewed them at HOPE or JHET under my watch—we did—but they were definitely the exception, not the rule. The goal, ultimately, is to serve the readers. So the question is always: What books will do that? Sometimes that means highlighting something genuinely new and novel. Other times, it’s, “Okay, this is the 18th book on Adam Smith’s theory of value... but it’s got an interesting take—let’s find someone to review it.”
11Julien Gradoz: And did it matter to you if a review had already been published in another journal?
12Steven G. Medema: No, no, not at all. I look at that the same way I look at book prizes. Sometimes people say, “Well, one Society shouldn’t give its best book prize to the same book another Society already recognized.” Why not? Is it a prize for a second-best book? It’s like I said earlier: reviews add layers to the conversation. Different reviewers bring different perspectives, and that kind of multiplicity enriches the discourse. So the fact that a book had already been reviewed elsewhere never bothered me. Now, the interesting twist is that if you’ve got five different book review editors in the field, odds are they’ll all think of the same one or two ideal reviewers for a particular book. So, in a way, there’s a bit of a race to reach that person first.
13Julien Gradoz: Precisely, let’s speak about the choice of a reviewer. How do you think about it?
14Steven G. Medema: This is where the book review editor has an immense amount of power—and it’s power that needs to be used wisely. It’s like selecting referees for article submissions: you have to be very careful about whom you ask. You don’t want a reviewer who’s just going to gush over the book. No book is perfect. But you also don’t want someone who’s going to tear it to shreds. That puts you in an interesting position, because sometimes there’s a person whose opinion you’d love to have in print—but you also know they might come down hard. And maybe that shouldn’t matter, but for me, as an editor, it does. I see it as part of the editor’s social responsibility.
It’s one thing if someone like Roger Backhouse or Keith Tribe writes a book and you assign it to a reviewer with a very different perspective, and the review ends up being critical. Senior scholars can handle that. But if it’s a junior scholar, that kind of review can be really risky. In my view, you have to be especially thoughtful in those cases. Gratuitous savagery doesn’t help anyone. The goal is to find a reviewer who can provide a fair, balanced, and insightful assessment. That’s what really matters.
15Julien Gradoz: In 1941, Davis R. Dewey—editor of the American Economic Review from 1911 to 1940—emphasized the value of generating controversy through book reviews, saying he found it stimulating (Coats, 1969). What’s your take on that? Do you think it’s desirable for some reviews to be polemical or sharply critical? Have you ever intentionally chosen reviewers to provoke controversy? Were there any notable controversies that resulted?
16Steven G. Medema: Well, I did publish one review once—I won’t say by whom or in which journal—that I worried, for a moment, might get me sued. Fortunately, it didn’t. So that was a relief. But no, I don’t really share that editor’s point of view. Let me tell you a quick story to explain why. Early in my tenure at JHET, a senior scholar—who shall remain nameless—told me, “You know what would be good for JHET? Publish things that stir up a little controversy. Get people talking about the journal.” That’s not really my style.
Fast forward a year or two, and I published an article that was, along the way, critical of a particular approach to a subject—again, I’ll skip the details to keep this anonymous. As it happened, that approach was one the very same scholar had championed. And let’s just say he was not happy about it. So, the irony was hard to miss: the person who’d encouraged me to stir up controversy was the first to object when the controversy touched something of his own. It makes me wonder: what would the editor of the AER have thought of one of his own books being the subject of the kind of “controversial” review he advocated? In a small field like ours, I don’t think gratuitous controversy does anyone much good. We don’t need things that tear us apart—we need more things that bring us together.
17Julien Gradoz: Have you ever requested explanations or sought a “right of reply” concerning reviews of your work that you found inappropriate or erroneous? As an editor, how have you addressed such situations, and what is your general stance regarding authors’ “rights to reply”? Have you ever published an author’s reply?
18Steven G. Medema: I have never given a thought to replying to a review of one of my books, but I did encounter a couple of situations like that as an editor. But no, though my memory may be faulty, I don’t believe I’ve ever published a reply from an author responding to a review of their work. My view has always been: the author had the chance to make their case in the book, and the reviewer gets their turn in the review. If you open the door to replies, then of course the reviewer may feel aggrieved, and suddenly you’re in a ping-pong match. Where do you draw the line? For me, you draw it by not starting that cycle in the first place. Now, I might feel differently if there were an obvious, serious error in a review—something objectively wrong, right on the face of it.
That said, there was one case—at HOPE—that was a bit different. It involved a review of Keith Tribe’s Constructing Economic Science (2022). The review was generally positive, but included some significant critiques. The reviewers—Nahid Aslanbeigui and Guy Oakes (2023)—raised important questions, and they actually invited further conversation with Tribe on those points. When I read the review, I thought: “You know, this could be useful for readers. Tribe’s argument is quite novel, and the reviewers engaged with it thoughtfully. Continuing that conversation could be valuable.” So I invited them to contribute short follow-up pieces (Aslanbeigui and Oakes, 2025; Tribe, 2025). Tribe had a few thousand words to elaborate on his position, and Aslanbeigui and Oakes responded with their own piece. But crucially, this wasn’t framed as “I don’t like your review!” or “You misunderstood my book!” It was a continuation of a serious conversation—one that began in the book, continued in the review, and then extended just a bit further in these follow-up pieces. I made it clear to both sides that this was meant to be constructive and conversational—not adversarial—and that it would end there: one reply from each side, and that’s it. They were both on board, and we published the exchange. I thought it turned out really well. It was done in the right spirit—more about deepening understanding than settling scores.
19Julien Gradoz: Have you ever extended that idea into publishing book review symposia?
20Steven G. Medema: That was always on my mind—largely because Warren [Samuels] had done it. When I took over as editor of the JHET, I thought I might do something similar. In fact, I think I even mentioned that in the materials I submitted to the HES search committee when they invited me to put my name forward. I may have said something about wanting to include symposia in the book review section.
I think there were one or two books for which I ended up publishing two separate reviews. But full-on review symposia? Those are hard to pull off. Even when I was book review editor at HOPE—which was 25+ years into my career, with a pretty long Rolodex—it was still tough to line up three or four strong reviewers for a single book. We’re all so hyper-specialized now, and getting multiple people who both know the topic well and have the time to write a review can be a real challenge.
And then there’s the space issue. If you’re an online journal, you can do what you want—there’s no page limit. But for journals like HOPE, JHET, EJHET, and others, you’re still working with fixed page and word counts. So, every time you publish three reviews of one book, that means one or two other books don’t get reviewed. Whether that tradeoff is worth it really depends on who’s reading the journal and whose work is—or isn’t—being covered. So while I liked the idea in principle, and made some small moves in that direction, it turned out to be hard to implement consistently. I didn’t end up doing as much of it as I would’ve liked.
21Julien Gradoz: How much attention did you give to books written in languages other than English?
22Steven G. Medema: During the JHET years, I did next to nothing in that area. I just didn’t have easy access to those books, and a large share of the journal’s readership was native English speakers at that time. Especially, for North Americans, the odds of them being able to read a book in French, German, or Italian weren’t great, frankly—partly because of how we handle foreign language instruction over here.
My thinking was always: there are already so many books being published in English. When you start to look at the ratios—how many people will actually read a book in, say, French? How many JHET readers are equipped to do that? Are there already outlets in those languages—French-language journals, Italian journals—that cover those books in their native context? It just seemed, from an editorial point of view, like the audience for reviewing non-English books in JHET wasn’t really there.
Now, I’m not saying that view is the right one. I wouldn’t claim that. There may well be better ways to handle this—other models that do a better job of integrating non-English scholarship. But for me, practically speaking, my own language skills were limited. I can read English and muddle through a bit of Latin, but my ability to assess the quality or relevance of a book written in French or German? Pretty much zero. I could go by the name on the cover, sure, but that’s not how I chose to do things.
23Julien Gradoz: Have you noticed changes in reviewers’ behavior—such as more frequent refusals or greater difficulty securing reviews? If so, what do you think explains those shifts?
24Steven G. Medema: Yes, I think it’s gotten progressively harder to get people to agree to do book reviews. And the main reason, I suspect, is that the return on writing a book review—at least in terms of one’s CV—is basically zero. Honestly, it might even be below zero. You hear it from colleagues: “Why are you wasting your time on this?” There’s this idea that books don’t really matter anymore, and if books don’t matter, then book reviews matter even less. The reasoning is: you could be using that time to work on a journal article that does count for something. So, from a career standpoint, the incentive structure is pretty discouraging.
I also think the field has shrunk. I could be wrong, but it seems like the pool of strong reviewers is smaller than it was 25 or 30—or certainly 50—years ago. Back then, more people were conversant across subfields. So if you had a book on the history of macro, trade theory, or development economics, you had both historians of economics and economists with historical awareness who could write usefully about it. Now, it’s harder. We’re dealing with a smaller pool of reviewers, and at the same time, scholars are under increasing pressure to publish in top journals, secure grants, meet department metrics—all of which chip away at the time and willingness to do things like reviews. Add to that the growing specialization in our field. There are very few true generalists left—I could probably count them on one hand. Even those who are broadly specialized, say in classical economics from Smith to 1870, are becoming rare. So when you’re trying to find a good reviewer for a specific book, you’re often looking for someone with a pretty narrow expertise. And that just makes the whole process harder. And then there is the fact that the best prospective reviewers have often reviewed the manuscript for the publisher, or blurbed the book, which effectively disqualifies them from serving as a reviewer for the journal.
25Julien Gradoz: Obtaining physical book copies from publishers has become increasingly difficult. Has this affected your ability to persuade scholars to write reviews?
26Steven G. Medema: Absolutely. And it ties into how the economics of scholarly publishing have shifted. Publishers now expect very small print runs for academic books—maybe just a few hundred copies. Most of those are destined for libraries. When you have a small print run, you’re spreading the fixed production costs over fewer units, which drives up the price. So individual scholars often don’t buy the books. Then the publishers say, “Well, scholars aren’t buying them, so why should we print more?” And you end up in this strange kind of equilibrium—where scholars say, “We’d love to read and review your books, but they’re too expensive,” and publishers say, “There’s no demand.” From the publisher’s point of view, sending out a review copy is a real cost—especially when they’re only printing 300 or so copies. That book is now a fairly valuable commodity, and they’re sending it off to a journal with no guarantee it’ll even get reviewed, or that the review will lead to any sales. So, they hesitate.
For the book review editor, it’s a headache. Publishers no longer just send books—you have to hunt them down. You end up on 25 different publisher mailing lists just to keep up. Then you have to comb through huge catalogs covering all sorts of fields to find the handful of titles that are relevant to your area. And even then, getting a physical copy can be like pulling teeth. More and more, publishers just want to send eBooks—there’s no shipping cost, and it’s essentially free to them. That might make financial sense for them but it doesn’t work well for our field. Historians of economics, in general, are “people of the book.” They want to hold the physical thing. Sure, there are a few people who prefer PDFs, but not many. That mismatch makes things harder.
The bottom line is that being a book review editor has become a lot more of a chore than it used to be. I loved the experience of doing it at JHET—I really did—but the world has changed. It’s been more than 15 years since I stepped down from that role, and in that time, both the publishing landscape and our field have shifted dramatically—and not in ways that make the job easier or more appealing. If I ever became a journal editor again, I wouldn’t handle book reviews myself. No way. I’d find someone else to do that part.
27Julien Gradoz: Today, when a book is published, the Internet quickly provides access to summaries, seminar presentations, and critiques—by academics and non-academics alike. Under these circumstances, what’s the point of maintaining a book review section in a journal? Will this environment push the genre toward longer, more analytical review essays?
28Steven G. Medema: I’ll believe it when I see it [laughs]. My view on this has a few parts. First, I don’t think the dynamics of the profession support the idea that longer, more analytical review essays will be treated as the equivalent of a “real” journal publication. I just don’t see economics departments giving someone credit for a review essay—no matter how thoughtful or rigorous—on par with a standard peer-reviewed article. The demand side isn’t there. And on the supply side, I’m not convinced many people are willing to take on that kind of work. Junior scholars, in particular, would be unwise to do it. Not only because they won’t get career credit for it, but also because they might not yet have the human capital—the depth of immersion in the field—to do that kind of essay well. These pieces are hard to write. They take a lot of time and effort, and at the end of the day, you still don’t get much more credit for writing one than you would for a standard three-page review. To me, it just multiplies all the challenges of writing a book review by five. More time, more work—and still very little institutional reward.
There is a huge public good aspect to reviewing. When someone takes the time to write a deep, reflective review essay, it’s a real service to the field. It might also help the author of the essay—give them a reason to dive more deeply into an area, maybe figure some things out they’ve been meaning to think through. So there are personal and intellectual benefits. And some of these essays have been great. There’ve been some excellent ones published in HOPE—Doug Irwin (2018) wrote a particularly nice one, and Philippe Fontaine has done a few very good ones too (e.g., Fontaine, 2024). But those are senior scholars. And that’s kind of the point. The people who tend to write these pieces are at a stage in their careers where they can afford to do something for the sake of the field, without worrying about the professional payoff.
29Julien Gradoz: Throughout your career, you’ve written over thirty book reviews. When deciding whether to review a book—especially if it lies outside your primary areas of interest—what criteria guide your decision?
30Steven G. Medema: Well, to start with, I’d say I’m a mediocre book review writer at best. I generally don’t enjoy writing reviews. I liked commissioning them as a reviews editor, and I enjoy reading them—but I’m not a particularly good or eager writer of them.
That said, I don’t think I’ve turned down many requests to review books—same goes for referee requests. My default is usually to say yes... and then sometimes regret it later. When I do say no, it’s usually because I look at the book and think, “I’m not going to have anything useful or interesting to say about this.” Or I’m just overwhelmed with other commitments. But otherwise, I’ll give it a shot.
I’ve reviewed several books over the years where I didn’t have specific expertise, apart from my generalist inclinations. But that can still be worthwhile. It’s a bit like being a referee or a conference discussant for a paper outside your area—you may not catch all the fine-grained details, but you can still recognize what makes an argument compelling or flawed. Sometimes, an outsider’s perspective actually helps. You might spot big-picture issues or strengths that a specialist, focused on the technical details, could miss. It’s that “forest and trees” dynamic. An expert might catch errors in footnote 42 but miss what’s innovative—or problematic—about the book’s core argument. So, if the topic interests me and I think I might have something worthwhile to say—even if it’s outside my main area—I’ll usually agree to review it.
31Julien Gradoz: How did your experience as a book review editor influence the way you write your own reviews?
32Steven G. Medema: I was always a very light-touch book review editor. I almost never asked for changes, apart from maybe flagging a typo or two. My view was that reviewers have the right to say what they want to say. For instance, when it came to length, I’d usually offer a general guideline—something like 1,000 to 1,500 words. But if a review came in at 1,800, that was fine. If it was 2,500, I might say, “Look, we’ve got some space limitations—could you trim this down a bit?” But even then, I’d try to be flexible. There may have been one or two times when I asked a reviewer to flesh out a particular point—“This part is really interesting; can you say a bit more?”—but that was rare. My attitude was: they’ve already done us the favor of reviewing the book, so let them say what they want to say, and let’s move on.
And yes, all that reading has an effect. If you’re reading reviews constantly—some good, some not—you naturally absorb things. It’s like fiction writing: the best writers tend to be voracious readers. They might cite two or three authors as major influences, but mostly they’re just always reading, picking up ideas and instincts along the way. So, I think that happened to me too. I picked up what works, what doesn’t—what to avoid. Sometimes it’s just, “Okay, this kind of review is really boring. Don’t do that.” Over time, it shapes how you write.
33Julien Gradoz: You authored two reviews for the JHET while serving as editor-in-chief (Medema, 2003; 2005), and one for HOPE while book review editor (Medema, 2020). What influenced your decision to write those reviews yourself?
34Steven G. Medema: I don’t actually remember what the books were, but in each case, it was probably a mix of two things: either I thought, “I’d be a really good reviewer for this,” or “This book is just so interesting, I want to review it myself.” In a way, it was a small bit of compensation for doing the book reviews work—since during both of my editorial stints, I wasn’t compensated at all. And I don’t think I would’ve done it if someone else had immediately come to mind as the ideal reviewer—unless, of course, that person had already been tapped by another journal, which happens a lot.
35Julien Gradoz: Do you have any memorable anecdotes about writing or publishing reviews—especially reactions from authors, or reviews that stood out for other reasons?
36Steven G. Medema: One thing that’s true of book reviews, but not usually of journal articles, is that you’re often given a bit more artistic license. So over the years, I’ve made a few allusions or used turns of phrase in reviews that I wouldn’t dare use in a more... let’s say, uptight scholarly context. I think I once referred to the “cult of Sraffa” in a review (Medema, 2017)—that probably wouldn’t have made it into a standard journal article. There have also been cases—more often with edited volumes—where the book claimed to represent a particular subfield, or even the field as a whole, but in my view, didn’t really reflect the diversity or balance of perspectives that actually exist. That’s not something I object to in principle—if a book clearly states that it’s coming from a particular point of view, that’s fine. But when it presents itself as a neutral or comprehensive take, and it clearly isn’t—because of who was included, what was emphasized, what was left out—that bothers me. In one or two cases, I’ve called out that kind of omission or skew in terms that I enjoyed writing—language I wouldn’t use in a standard academic article, but that fits the slightly more opinionated tone a book review can carry. There’s a little more space in reviews for commentary, critique, even wit. And I’ve taken advantage of that from time to time, in ways I actually had fun with and remain kind of proud of.
37Julien Gradoz: Throughout your career, you’ve authored or edited more than twenty books. Have you ever been surprised by the nature or extent of the reviews your work received—positively or negatively? Did you ever feel the need to advocate for your books to be reviewed in particular journals?
38Steven G. Medema: No, I’ve never tried to get a journal to review my books. I’m not comfortable doing that sort of thing. And having been a book review editor myself, I understand the constraints—editors have to make choices. Some books get reviewed, and some don’t. That’s just how it is. Now, of course we’d all prefer to see our work reviewed in the more prominent journals, but there’s a lot of books. So no, I’ve never lobbied for coverage. In fact, I never liked getting those kinds of requests when I was a reviews editor—unless it was a book I didn’t know about, and the message helped bring it to my attention. Otherwise, it just puts the editor in an awkward position. I’m not a fan of that.
As for the reviews I’ve received for my books, I’ve never really had an issue. The Hesitant Hand (Medema, 2009), for example, was reviewed very positively across the board. But what was interesting—and actually helpful—was that every reviewer also pointed out things they thought I’d left out. And my first reaction was always, “No, I didn’t leave that out—it’s just not what the book was about!” For instance, people pointed out omissions like antitrust, regulation, or macro policy. But the book wasn’t meant to be a history of the government’s role in the economy. It was focused on the evolution of the concept of market failure, particularly around externalities. So the real issue was—I hadn’t made that clear enough. And that’s on me. If smart reviewers didn’t fully grasp the book’s purpose, then I didn’t communicate it well enough. A reader shouldn’t have to work to figure out what a book is trying to do.
The first reviews I really remember reading were for my book on Ronald Coase (Medema, 1994), which was my first solo-authored book. Before that, I’d co-authored a book on Gardiner Means with Warren [Samuels] (Samuels and Medema, 1990)—I honestly don’t remember if that ever got reviewed. But the Coase book wasn’t reviewed much, mostly because the publisher printed very few copies and didn’t send them out widely for review. At the same time, I published The Legacy of Ronald Coase in Economic Analysis (Medema, 1995), a two-volume set that collected a few of Coase’s key articles along with literature they inspired, much of which historians of economics don’t typically encounter. Law review articles, for instance. Uskali Mäki reviewed both the Coase biography and the Elgar two-volume set together in the Economic Journal (Mäki, 1996). And he wrote a wonderful review. I can’t tell you what that meant to me at the time. I was still new to the history of economics. Writing the Coase book is what really shifted my focus full-time into the field, moving me away from the computational general equilibrium work I’d been doing. So to get that kind of validation—from someone like Uskali, who by his own admission isn’t easily impressed—was just amazing. It really encouraged me to keep going.
39Julien Gradoz: Between 1998 and 2008, none of the eight books you published during your time as editor of the JHET were reviewed in that journal. Similarly, your books published between 2017 and 2024 were not reviewed in HOPE during your tenure there. Was this ever explicitly discussed, and how was the decision managed?
40Steven G. Medema: No, it wasn’t formally discussed, but it was my firm policy. I just refuse to have my own books reviewed in a journal I’m editing. I don’t think that’s how it should work. I feel the same way about using my own work in the classroom. I don’t like assigning my own articles in graduate courses—though I do it occasionally, usually because, in a couple of areas I cover, I am the literature [laughs]. But even then, I’m not especially comfortable with it. A similar issue came up when I was book review editor at HOPE, though not in relation to my own books. It had to do with the Oxford Studies in the History of Economics series, which I edit for Oxford University Press. When Kevin [Hoover] asked me to take over the HOPE reviews section, I raised the potential conflict right away. I said, “Look, there are a lot of strong books in that series. Many of them would be perfectly appropriate for review in HOPE. But I can’t be the one to commission those reviews—it’s a conflict of interest.” So we came to an agreement: for any book from Oxford—whether it was in my series or not—Roy [Weintraub] would make the decision about whether it should be reviewed, and who should review it. I would have no role in that process whatsoever. That separation was my idea. I didn’t want there to be any perception of a conflict of interest.
41Julien Gradoz: Finally, what insights can historians of economics gain by examining book reviews? Can reviews offer new perspectives or alternative narratives? What methodological considerations should historians keep in mind when analyzing them?
42Steven G. Medema: I think book reviews are probably underutilized as historical sources. What this brings to mind is a paper I wrote for a HOPE conference, where I looked at the early history of what we now call public choice analysis. As part of that, I went back and read the early reviews of Buchanan and Tullock’s The Calculus of Consent (Buchanan and Tullock, 1962)—and it turned out to be a really rich exercise. There weren’t a ton of reviews, but several of them were written by political scientists, which was interesting in itself—especially when compared with how economists reviewed the book. But the thing that stuck with me most was from the American Economic Review where the review was listed under “related disciplines” (a review by Mancur Olson, 1962). That detail might seem minor, but it’s actually quite telling. It suggests the book wasn’t even viewed as economics at the time. And that has real implications for how we understand the early reception of public choice theory. That kind of thing is invaluable when you’re writing intellectual history. Reviews can offer a window into how a book was positioned at the time, how it was received by different audiences, what the prevailing concerns were, and what kinds of intellectual networks were forming—or resisting formation—around a set of ideas. So yes, I think reviews can absolutely provide useful input for historians. They give you more than just a summary or evaluation—they can tell you about the state of a field, disciplinary boundaries, tensions, expectations, and shifts. There’s a lot there if you read them with a historical lens.