Judith Stein, who wrote authoritative books about the black nationalist leaderMarcus Garvey and the impact of politics on the American economy while teaching history at City College for 50 years, died on Monday in Manhattan. She was 77.

The cause was complications of lung cancer, her colleague James Oakes, a history professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center, said.

Professor Stein, who retired from teaching last year, influenced the field of political economics with major studies on the collapse of the American steel industry and on the decline in traditional liberalism, which she attributed to a policy agenda that placed Wall Street ahead of factory workers.

“She raised the standard of the field by seamlessly weaving together the political, economic, diplomatic and social histories of late-20th-century United States history,” Professor Oakes said in an email. “Stein wrote history that was politically engaged but always rigorous, neither sentimental nor dogmatic.”