Jonathan Levy

Jonathan Levy is a historian of economic life in the United States, with interests in business history, political economy, legal history, and the history of ideas and culture. His research and teaching focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, increasingly engaging global and comparative perspectives.

Prior to joining Sciences Po, Levy held the position of James Westfall Thompson Professor of History and Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He previously served as Professor of History at Princeton University. He has also been a visiting professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) and held the Ciampi Chair as a visiting scholar at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa.

His first book, Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America examines the history of risk in the United States. The work explores the concurrent development, in the context of slave emancipation, of an individualist ethos that equated freedom with risk-taking and a corporate financial system structured around risk management. Freaks of Fortune received several major awards, including the Frederick Jackson Turner Award, the Ellis W. Hawley Prize, and the Avery O. Craven Award from the Organisation of American Historians, as well as the William Nelson Cromwell Book Prize from the American Society for Legal History.

Levy is also the author of Ages of American Capitalism: A History of the United States, a sweeping interpretation of American economic history from colonial times to the Great Recession. His most recent publication, The Real Economy: History and Theory, brings together a decade of essays which elaborate the theoretical framework underpinning Ages of American Capitalism.

He is co-editor of the journal Critical Historical Studies and received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.