Biography
Sven Beckert is Laird Bell Professor of History at Harvard University, where he teaches the history of the United States and co-directs the Weatherhead Imitative on Global History. Beckert has been a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies, among others. His latest book, Empire of Cotton: A Global History, won the Bancroft Award, the Alfred D. Chandler Jr. Award, the Taft Award, the Cundill Prize for Academic Excellence, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer. The New York Times listed it as one of the ten best books published in the United States in 2015. Currently, Beckert is at work on Capitalism: A Global History, to be published by Penguin Press.