These biographies of Canadians are arranged chronologically by date of death. Entries in each volume are listed alphabetically, with bibliographies of source material and an index to names.

Challenging accepted notions that elite dominance defined Acadian ideology, Sheila Andrew attributes the development of the Acadian elites not to the "Acadian renaissance" or an Acadian nationalist spirit but to emerging economic and political opportunities. Through an objective analysis of the formation and composition of elites in New Brunswick from 1861 to 1881, Andrew argues that there was no single elite class among Acadians, only a series of elites who were neither united nor in a position to influence Acadian society as a whole. She identifies four elite classes - the farming elite, the commercial elite, the educated elite, which includes priests and professionals, and the political elite - and examines their family and community backgrounds and career paths to determine how they achieved elite status. She investigates patterns of networking growth and continuity among elites as well as the relationship between elites and non-elites. Arguing that Acadian nationalism did not fit the traditional pattern of nationalism in a colonized country because of the peculiar nature of Acadian society and the minority status of francophone Acadians within anglophone New Brunswick, she situates the Acadian experience within the context of other cultural and linguistic minorities.

Farmers feed cities, but starting in the nineteenth century they painted them too. Flax from Canada and the northern United States produced fibre for textiles and linseed oil for paint – critical commodities in a century when wars were fought over fibre and when increased urbanization demanded expanded paint markets. Flax Americana re-examines the changing relationships between farmers, urban consumers, and the land through a narrative of Canada's first and most important industrial crop. Initially a specialty crop grown by Mennonites and other communities on contracts for small-town mill complexes, flax became big business in the late nineteenth century as multinational linseed oil companies quickly displaced rural mills. Flax cultivation spread across the northern plains and prairies, particularly along the edges of dryland settlement, and then into similar ecosystems in South America's Pampas. Joshua MacFadyen's detailed examination of archival records reveals the complexity of a global commodity and its impact on the eastern Great Lakes and northern Great Plains. He demonstrates how international networks of scientists, businesses, and regulators attempted to predict and control the crop's frontier geography, how evolving consumer concerns about product quality and safety shaped the market and its regulations, and how the nature of each region encouraged some forms of business and limited others. The northern flax industry emerged because of border-crossing communities. By following the plant across countries and over time Flax Americana sheds new light on the ways that commodities, frontiers, and industrial capitalism shaped the modern world.

Honorable Mention, 2019 Saul Viener Book Prize, given by the American Jewish Historical Society A vivid history of the American Jewish merchants who concentrated in the nation’s most important economic sector In the nineteenth century, Jewish merchants created a thriving niche economy in the United States’ most important industry—cotton—positioning themselves at the forefront of expansion during the Reconstruction Era. Jewish success in the cotton industry was transformative for both Jewish communities and their development, and for the broader economic restructuring of the South. Cotton Capitalists analyzes this niche economy and reveals its origins. Michael R. Cohen argues that Jewish merchants’ status as a minority fueled their success by fostering ethnic networks of trust. Trust in the nineteenth century was the cornerstone of economic transactions, and this trust was largely fostered by ethnicity. Much as money flowed along ethnic lines between Anglo-American banks, Jewish merchants in the Gulf South used their own ethnic ties with other Jewish-owned firms in New York, as well as Jewish investors across the globe, to capitalize their businesses. They relied on these family connections to direct Northern credit and goods to the war-torn South, avoiding the constraints of the anti-Jewish prejudices which had previously denied them access to credit, allowing them to survive economic downturns. These American Jewish merchants reveal that ethnicity matters in the development of global capitalism. Ethnic minorities are and have frequently been at the forefront of entrepreneurship, finding innovative ways to expand narrow sectors of the economy. While this was certainly the case for Jews, it has also been true for other immigrant groups more broadly. The story of Jews in the American cotton trade is far more than the story of American Jewish success and integration—it is the story of the role of ethnicity in the development of global capitalism.