Tooze provides an interpretation of the period of dramatic statistical innovation between 1900 and 1945. The Weimar Republic and the Third Reich were in the forefront of statistical innovation in the interwar decades. New ways of measuring the economy were inspired both by contemporary developments in macroeconomic theory and the needs of government. Under the Nazi regime, these statistical tools provided the basis for a radical experiment in economic planning. Based on the German example, Tooze argues for a more wide-ranging reconsideration of the history of modern economic knowledge.
Adam Tooze is a British historian who is a professor at Columbia University. Previously, he was Reader in Modern European Economic History at the University of Cambridge and professor at Yale University.
After graduating with a B.A. degree in economics from King's College, Cambridge in 1989, Tooze studied at the Free University of Berlin before moving to the London School of Economics for a doctorate in economic history.
In 2002, he was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize for Modern History. He is best known for his economic study of the Third Reich, The Wages of Destruction, which was one of the winners of the Wolfson History Prize for 2006.