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Control Science: How Management Made the Modern World
A thrilling intellectual and economic history of workplace control from the birth of capitalism to the modern tech giants.
Today, the ideas of modern economics seem as natural as the laws of gravity. That we are all private and self-interested individuals competing in the marketplace have become common sense. Yet this obscures the centuries long, contested history of the struggle between workers and capitalists for control of their work and of their lives. The ideas that rule our lives are not scientific truths that experts have discovered but political visions created by ideologues.
In this sweeping work of history, Henry Snow traces the long arc of the "science of control" over the past four hundred. Moving from colonial America and the enclosure of common land in early modern England, via Josiah Wedgwood's Etruria and Jeremy and Samuel Bentham’s attempts to transform labor and governance in Russia and Britain, to the vast Amazon warehouses of today, Snow demonstrates how bosses have thought about control in the workplace and how those ideas have been both implemented and contested. Blending intellectual and economic history, Control Science is a thrilling and lucid work of history that will in denaturalising the economic ideas, show how they developed and who developed them, helping us to see the world anew.
Today, the ideas of modern economics seem as natural as the laws of gravity. That we are all private and self-interested individuals competing in the marketplace have become common sense. Yet this obscures the centuries long, contested history of the struggle between workers and capitalists for control of their work and of their lives. The ideas that rule our lives are not scientific truths that experts have discovered but political visions created by ideologues.
In this sweeping work of history, Henry Snow traces the long arc of the "science of control" over the past four hundred. Moving from colonial America and the enclosure of common land in early modern England, via Josiah Wedgwood's Etruria and Jeremy and Samuel Bentham’s attempts to transform labor and governance in Russia and Britain, to the vast Amazon warehouses of today, Snow demonstrates how bosses have thought about control in the workplace and how those ideas have been both implemented and contested. Blending intellectual and economic history, Control Science is a thrilling and lucid work of history that will in denaturalising the economic ideas, show how they developed and who developed them, helping us to see the world anew.
352 pages, Hardcover
Published May 12, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 9, 2026
A fascinating history through a range of eras and characters, ranging from sugar plantation slavers, John Locke and the Benthams, Charles Koch, Frederick Taylor, Jeff Bezos and Alfred Sloan. And Herbert Spencer.
The book focuses on the science of control, how management practitioners and economists worked to.exert control over the workplace and particularly how they conspired to keep down the working class.
The book is well researched and led me to add at least four works into my reading queue. The writing, particularly in the second half, is insightful and occasionally humorous in a trenchant way.
The book focuses on the science of control, how management practitioners and economists worked to.exert control over the workplace and particularly how they conspired to keep down the working class.
The book is well researched and led me to add at least four works into my reading queue. The writing, particularly in the second half, is insightful and occasionally humorous in a trenchant way.
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May 5, 2026'A powerful if one-sided case that wealthy elites have over centuries conspired with their managers to suggest that “there is no alternative” to market fundamentalism.' My FT review (free to read) https://as.ft.com/r/8c299730-5200-42a...
May 18, 2026
Very good, if a bit one sided
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews