Agrarian Puerto Rico: Reconsidering Rural Economy and Society, 1899-1940. By César J. Ayala and Laird W. Bergad. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. xvii, 307. $99.99, hardcover; $80.00, ebook.

Abstract

Even though the authors do not explicitly focus on the historic political and institutional forces that contributed to the current crisis, the book is deeply informative and persuasive. Economic historians will notice the potential parallels between the current crisis and displaced cottage industry workers of the first industrial revolution or the distress of the Great Depression. Aspects of the U.S. culture and institutions as detailed in Werner Troesken’s The Pox of Liberty: How the Constitution Left Americans Rich, Free, and Prone to Infection (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015) lie behind the policy and economic failings highlighted by Case and Deaton. The historical consequences of healthcare policies made over half a century ago as described by Melissa Thomasson (“The Importance of Group Coverage: How Tax Policy Shaped U.S. Health Insurance.” American Economic Review 93, no. 4 [2003]: 1373–84.) echo throughout the text. Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism highlights a relatively silent epidemic driven by economic precarity and provides a key description of the anatomy of the United States’ broader economic and social upheavals.