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Enterprise and Society Advance Access originally published online on November 20, 2007
Enterprise and Society 2007 8(4):765-776; doi:10.1093/es/khm083
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Copyright © The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference.

The Accidental Business Historian

William J. Hausman

WILLIAM J. HAUSMAN is Chancellor Professor of Economics at the College of William & Mary. Contact information: Department of Economics, P.O. Box 8795, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, 23187-8795, USA

E-mail: wjhaus@wm.edu

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

I want to begin with an apology to Anne Tyler, whose title I have so blatantly misappropriated. The idea of the "accidental business historian" has appealed to me for a long time, and I thought maybe Tyler's book also could provide a pithy lesson.1 Although a few of Macon Leary's character traits did strike a little close to home—there was a time, early in my career, that I would have considered multitasking by doing my laundry under foot while taking a shower—Macon's story is different from mine, except for the fact that we discovered our careers by accident.

But more about that shortly. Over the past few weeks I have enjoyed reading or rereading every presidential address given at the Business History Conference (BHC) since 1975, when the organization began publishing them regularly.2 They tend to be quite serious, and most of them stand very well the test of time.

. . . [Full Text of this Article]


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