Comments on Mira Wilkins, The History of Foreign Investment in the United States, 1914-1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004):

"This book is breathtaking in scope and highly original. Mira Wilkins provides the first comprehensive account of foreign investment into the United States in the interwar years. In a literature which remains extremely focused on the domestic economy, Wilkins shows the importance of the business and capital relations between the United States and the rest of the world and confronts important assumptions about the nature of American 'exceptionalism.' This work is a major event in historical scholarship, of significance far beyond the business history community, where it will become an immediate classic. It will be widely welcomed."

Geoffrey Jones
Harvard Business School

"A unique and valuable book about the pivotal period during which the United States switched from being a global debtor to a global creditor. The analysis of the role of 'cosmopolitan finance' in the interwar years is particularly interesting. No other work in international business history today matches the breadth, detail, and extensive research of Mira Wilkins's books."

Benjamin Gomes-Casseres
Brandeis University
International Business School

Mira Wilkins, Professor, Economics Department, Florida International University, is an economic and business historian. Her expertise is on the history of foreign investment, particularly on the history of multinational enterprise. She is the author of four Harvard University Press books: The Emergence of Multinational Enterprise: American Business Abroad from the Colonial Era to 1914 (1970), The Maturing of Multinational Enterprise: American Business Abroad from 1914 to 1970 (1974), The History of Foreign Investment in the United States to 1914 (1989), and The History of Foreign Investment in the United States, 1914-1945 (2004). In addition, she has published other books and numerous scholarly articles. Her works are widely cited.

She is a past president of the Business History Conference and a fellow of the Academy of International Business. She is the recipient of many honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, FIU's Outstanding University Professor Award, and the Business History Conference's Lifetime Achievement Award.