Shaun S. Nichols is an Associate Professor of History at Boise State University, where his research and teaching center on the history of capitalism, labor, and immigration in the United States and the world. His most recent book, Manufacturing Catastrophe: Massachusetts and the Making of Global Capitalism, 1813 to the Present (Oxford University Press: 2024), uses the economic history of Massachusetts to reevaluate traditional tales of nineteenth-century “industrialization” and twentieth-century “deindustrialization.” Instead, by following the constant churn of labor and capital in and out of Massachusetts and across the globe, it offers a much more troubling, cyclical history of constant economic creation, re-creation, and devastation. At Boise State, he teaches courses on American and global economic history, labor history, and American intellectual history.

 

Before coming to Boise State, Dr. Nichols served as a College Fellow in History at Harvard University, a Visiting Fellow at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, and an Associate of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. He has written book reviews and articles for journals such as Labor: Studies in Working-Class History, Enterprise & Society, the Business History Review, and Labour/Le Travail. He has also published work on the teaching of business history around the world as well as a beautifully illustrated children’s book, History is Rich, which offers an introduction to the economic history of the United States for youths ages 8-13.