Jacob Soll
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Jacob Soll (born 1968) is university professor and professor of philosophy, history and accounting at the
University of Southern California , mottoeng = "Let whoever earns the palm bear it" , religious_affiliation = Nonsectarian—historically Methodist , established = , accreditation = WSCUC , type = Private research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $8.1 ...
. Soll's work examines the mechanics of politics, statecraft and economics by dissecting the various elements of how modern states and political systems succeed and fail. He studies the philosophies of political and economic freedom with a focus on the relationship of the individual to the state. His first book, ''Publishing ¨The Prince¨: Reading, History, and the Birth of Political Criticism,"'' (2005) a study of the influence of Machiavelli's theory of prudence from the Enlightenment to the Renaissance, won the 2005 Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History. Soll was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2009 to write his second book, ''The Information Master: Jean Baptiste Colbert's State Information System, a'' history of Louis XIV's famous finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert's use of information in state-building. In 2011 he was awarded a $500,000
MacArthur Fellowship The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 indi ...
, known as the "Genius Grant" for his work on the history of the state. At the University of Southern California, he teaches on the philosophy of economic and political thought and Renaissance and Enlightenment history and has organized forums on European politics.


Early life and education

Soll was born in
Madison, Wisconsin Madison is the county seat of Dane County and the capital city of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2020 census the population was 269,840, making it the second-largest city in Wisconsin by population, after Milwaukee, and the 80th-lar ...
. His parents are David Soll, a molecular geneticist, and Beth Soll, née Bronfenbrenner, a modern dance choreographer. His grandfather is child psychologist
Urie Bronfenbrenner Urie Bronfenbrenner (April 29, 1917 – September 25, 2005) was a Russian-born American psychologist who is most known for his ecological systems theory.Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979).The ecology of human development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University ...
. Through his maternal grandmother, Liese Bronfenbrenner, née Price, Soll is the great-great-grandson of the German Orientalist, Eugen Prym (1843–1913), and great-grandson of the English author and professor, Hereward Thimbleby Price (1880–1964). Early hometowns included
Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston ...
, Iowa City, and
Paris, France Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...
. He earned a B.A. from the
University of Iowa The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is organized into 12 col ...
in 1991, a D.E.A. in 1993 from
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales The School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (french: École des hautes études en sciences sociales; EHESS) is a graduate ''grande école'' and '' grand établissement'' in Paris focused on academic research in the social sciences. The ...
, and a Ph.D. in 1998 from Magdalene College, Cambridge.


Academic career

After completing his Ph.D., Soll was, previously, a lecturer at
Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
(1997–1999) and a professor of history at
Rutgers University-Camden Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and was ...
(1999–2012). He was the Luso-American Foundation Fellow of Portugal's Biblioteca Nacionale de Lisboa; a Fernand Braudel Professor at the
European University Institute The European University Institute (EUI) is an international postgraduate and post-doctoral teaching and research institute and an independent body of the European Union with juridical personality, established by the member states to contribu ...
in Florence in 2007; a visiting fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge in 2009; and a visiting fellow at the Max Planck Institute in 2018. In 2013, Soll delivered the Huygens-Descartes Lecture at the Akadamie van Wetenschappen in Amsterdam. Soll was named a university professor by USC president C. L. Max Nikias in 2018. Soll's first book, ''Publishing The Prince'' (2005), examines the role of commentaries, editions, and translations of Machiavelli produced by the previously little-studied figure Amelot de La Houssaye (1634–1706), who became the most influential writer on secular politics during the reign of
Louis XIV , house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Ver ...
. Grounded in analysis of archival, manuscript, and early printed sources, Soll shows how Amelot and his publishers arranged prefaces, columns, and footnotes in a manner that transformed established works, imbuing books previously considered as supporting royal power with an alternate, even revolutionary, political message. ''Publishing "The Prince"'' was the winner of the American Philosophical Society's 2005 Barzun Prize. In his second book, ''The Information Master'' (2009), he investigates the formation of a state-information gathering and classifying network by
Louis XIV , house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Ver ...
's chief minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, revealing that Colbert's passion for information was both a means of control and a medium for his own political advancement: his systematic and encyclopedic information collection served to strengthen and uphold Louis XIV's absolute rule. With these and other projects in progress including an intellectual and practical history of accounting and its role in governance in the modern world and a study of the composition of library catalogues during the Enlightenment. In 2014, he authored ''The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations'' (2014). A history of the role of accounting in political and financial accountability from the Ancient world to the modern age was a worldwide best-seller, particularly in Asia, where it received numerous positive reviews. ''The Financial Times'' noted that in:
Soll's wry and lucid book ... accountability and accountancy become a way of investigating the rise and fall of nations.
It also led to Soll taking an active role in advising the Greek government during its debt crisis. He addressed the Hellenic Parliament about the history of public financial management in June 2018, on the eve of the end of the Greek bailout. Soll has worked closely with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, and has also advised the Portuguese government as well as the European Commission.


Journalistic contributions

Soll is a regular contributor to
The New Republic ''The New Republic'' is an American magazine of commentary on politics, contemporary culture, and the arts. Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in hu ...
, the
New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
, the
Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...
, and the
Chronicle of Higher Education ''The Chronicle of Higher Education'' is a newspaper and website that presents news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty and student affairs professionals (staff members and administrators). A subscription is required to r ...
. His 2015 New York Times article "Germany's Destructive Anger," about German attitudes towards the Greek debt was the subject of an article by
Paul Krugman Paul Robin Krugman ( ; born February 28, 1953) is an American economist, who is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a columnist for ''The New York Times''. In 2008, Krugman was ...
.


Works

* * *
The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Making and Breaking of Nations.
' Basic Books Limited. 2014.


References


External links

*http://articles.philly.com/2011-09-20/news/30180604_1_macarthur-fellows-macarthur-grant-practical-joke {{DEFAULTSORT:Soll, Jacob 1968 births Living people Alumni of Magdalene College, Cambridge 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers Fernand Braudel Fellows MacArthur Fellows Rutgers University faculty University of Iowa alumni American male non-fiction writers