Illinois Authors

The Illinois Center for the Book banner

Robert William Fogel

Born: 1926 in New York City
Pen Name: None

Connection to Illinois: Fogel lives and works in Chicago.

Biography: Fogel is a Nobel Prize-winning economist at the University of Chicago.


Awards:
  • Nobel Peace Prize in economics in 1993 and Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of American Institutions

Email: robert.fogelchicagobooth.edu
Website: http://www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty/bio.aspx?person_id=12824834048
Robert William Fogel on WorldCat : http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=robert+william+fogel


Selected Titles

The fourth great awakening & the future of egalitarianism /
ISBN: 0226256634 OCLC: 43312335

University of Chicago Press, Chicago : ©2000.

"Fogel contends that the ethical and political crises that currently beset the nation are the most recent manifestations of the recurring effort to bring human institutions into balance with the massive technological changes that drastically transform the economy and periodically destabilize the prevailing culture. Today, as in the past, that process of adjustment involves the rise of powerful religious/political movements which historians refer to as "Great Awakenings.""--Jacket.

The slavery debates, 1952-1990 :
ISBN: 9780807131992 OCLC: 52208422

Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge : ©2003.

During World War II, the United State's ideological position asserting races as fundamentally equal stood in sharp contrast to the reality of segregated American society. This contradiction, and the burgeoning civil rights movement, spurred young scholars to challenge the prevailing historical canon on American slavery. Rooted in racial stereotypes, it held that slavery, while inefficient and unprofitable, was overall socially benign. The ensuing slavery debates encompassed a reexamination of almost every aspect of American slavery and became one front in a battle waged over the place of cliometrics - the use of quantitative data and statistical methods to analyze historical problems. Economist and historian Robert William Fogel was at the forefront of the revisionists in the debates, and in this enlightening memoir he offers a personal account of the role cliometrics played in rethinking the economics of slavery and the South. Fogel and his colleague Stanley Engerman were among those who led in applying cliometrics to the study of slavery in the United States. Their 1974 ground-breaking book, Time on the Cross, revealed slavery to be a profitable and efficient labor system, demonstrating that economic growth and technological progress were possible even in a deeply immoral order. Slavery ended not because of any inherent economic weakness but due to antislavery political tactics and ultimately war, and that antislavery struggle, Fogel argues, transformed American civilization. Initial accolades from the scholarly community soon turned to condemnation and eventually accusations that Fogel and Engerman were racists themselves. Even after thirty years, and a Nobel Prize in economics for Fogel, Time on the Cross remains one of the most fiercely debated works of U.S. history in the twentieth century. Fogel chronicles all of these events as well as the emergence of a new generations of intellectual and political historians who questioned the progressive synthesis. In addition to reflecting on his own participation in the slavery debates, he recalls the contributions of numerous noted historians, including Ulrich B. Phillips, Kenneth Stampp, Frederick Jackson Turner, Eugene Genovese, John Blassingame, and Philip D. Morgan. Based on Fogel's 2001 Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures in Southern History, The Slavery Debates, 1952-1990 is both an enjoyable memoir and an information summary of the literature on the economics of American slavery. Supporters and detractors of this brilliant and controversial historian will welcome his valuable glimpse into one of the most interesting chapters of the historical profession.--Jacket.

Time on the cross :
ISBN: 0393312186 OCLC: 20131567

Norton, New York : 1989, ©1974.

Which road to the past? :
ISBN: 0300030118 OCLC: 9324412

Yale University Press, New Haven : ©1983.

Compares statistical and traditional approaches to the study of history and discusses categories of evidence, standards of proof, and the proper subject matter for history.

Without consent or contract :
ISBN: 0393027910 OCLC: 19724336

Norton, New York : ©1992-

Without consent or contract :
ISBN: 0393312194 OCLC: 18323636

Norton, New York : ©1989.

Relying on the latest measurement techniques of the economic historian, Fogel brings forth the clearest picture yet of the lives of the slaves, the world surrounding them, and the economic consequences of a system of subjugation.

 

 

Accessibility