Born in 1968, Jacob Soll is University Professor and Professor of Philosophy, History, and Accounting at the University of Southern California.
He received a BA from the University of Iowa, a D.E.A. from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, France, and a Ph.D. from Magdalene College, Cambridge University. He has taught at Cambridge University, Princeton University, Rutgers University, and the European University Institute in Fiesole, Italy, and USC.
Soll has been awarded numerous prestigious prizes including the Jacques Barzun Prize from the American Philosophical Society, two NEH Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and, in 2011, the $500,000 MacArthur “Genius Prize” Fellowship. He is the Chinese University of Hong Kong 2024-2025 Annual Distinguished Visiting Scholar, and the 2025 University of St. Gallen (Switzerland) Annual Visiting Professor.
His first book, Publishing “The Prince” (2005), examines how Machiavelli's work was popularized and influenced modern political thought. It received the Jacques Barzun Prize from the American Philosophical Society. In his second book, The Information Master (2009), Soll investigates how Louis XIV's famous finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert fused financial and information management to create one of the first modern states.
His most recent book, The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations (2014) has been a global best seller. The Financial Times says of the book:
“Soll's wry and lucid book traces this fraught relationship between accountability, economic success and political will from Renaissance Florence and the Netherlands to the larger modern republics of France and America, via the empires of Spain and Britain. In his hands, accountability and accountancy becomes a way of investigating the rise and fall of nations.... Without political will, financial accountability remains toothless, but what scope is there for rigorous accountability when the accountancy firms behind banks and corporations thought too big to fail are already their advisers and representatives? Perhaps some rather old lessons from the surprisingly exciting history of accountancy can help us deal with these not so very new problems.”
The Reckoning has sold more than 140,000 copies worldwide.
His fourth book, Free Market: The History of an Idea (finished, forthcoming, Basic Books, 2022) dissolves the dichotomy of market and government, showing, paradoxically, that it was campaigns for affluence led by alliances of the private sector and the state in the century and a half before the French Revolution that birthed modern economic wealth creation.
Co-authored with a global teach of leaders in public finance (Willen Buiter, Ian Ball, John Crompton, and Dag Detter), his most recent book, Public Net Worth: Accounting, Government, and Democracy (2024) was a Financial Times’ best summer book of 2024.
Soll is a regular contributor to the New York Times, Politico, the Boston Globe, The New Republic, PBS, Salon.com, Tablet and the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Soll has spent the last several years directly involved with policy questions concerning the Greek debt crisis and EU economic policy, working directly with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, his government and with almost all Greek, EU and private stake-holders. He continues to work closely with Prime Minister Mitsotakis’ government and with Finance Minister Christos Staikouras. He has also worked with the Portuguese government on financial reform. He consults for the European Commission and works closely with Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez of Spain, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and with business and civic leaders around the globe. Soll has worked closely with investor Paul Kazarian and was an Advisor at the Kazarian Foundation for Public Finance. A best-selling author in Japan, he also advises the Nikkei company and has a strong media presence there, in Switzerland, Holland, Britain, Taiwan, and South Korea.
He lives with his family in Los Angeles. His wife, the author Ellen Wayland-Smith teaches at USC; his daughter Sophia is a Trojan, Class of 2026; and his daughter Lydia just committed to USC, class of ’29.