This collection of eight-and-a-half essays makes an important contribution to both the theory and practice of business history. Six essays employ the new institutional economics and evolutionary theory to examine central issues in economic history and economic development as they arose in specific historical contexts in Western European countries. The other two-and-a-half, by S. R. H. Jones and the editors (the “half” is a brief but wonderful introduction), examine and critique the theoretical literature that provides the basis of the new institutional economics, laying out clearly its strengths and its limitations for contributing to our understanding of business and economic history. The volume thus provides a model of how business history should be done.