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A witch's hat and crooked stick, with the words "rags to witches"

Has Witch City Lost Its Way?

They’re hip, business-savvy, and know how to cast a spell: How a new generation of witches and warlocks selling $300 wands conquered Salem.
1836 lithograph of a slave trader marching enslaved people to be sold.

Partners in Brutality

New books investigate the brutality of the internal slave trade by focusing on businesses, and examine the role of white women in enslaving Black people.
A bicyclist rides past the rubble of a church.

The Disasters in Afghanistan and Haiti Share the Same Twisted Root

Half a world away, the citizens of two nations suffer at the hands of a familiar malefactor.
Political cartoon of the U.S Capitol

The Liberals Who Weakened Trust in Government

How public interest groups inadvertently aided the right’s ascendency.
Cover of 'The Swamp Peddlers'

How Schemers Built a State

Mark Massaro reviews Jason Vuic’s “The Swamp Peddlers: How Lot Sellers, Land Scammers, and Retirees Built Modern Florida and Transformed the American Dream.”
cheez-its

A Brief History of the Cheez-It

America's iconic orange cracker turns 100 this year.
Eli Lilly and Company. “Principal Office and Laboratories, Indianapolis, U.S.A.” Ink on paper, from the Hand Book of Pharmacy and Therapeutics, 1919. Via Wikimedia Commons.

How To Make An Oligopoly

A seven-point memo proposing control of the global insulin market.
Old Bay Seasoning

The Jewish Roots of Old Bay Seasoning

Oy Bay! Become seasoned on the history of America's beloved spice blend.
A painting of a slave ship.

New York City and the Persistence of the Atlantic Slave Trade

Even after slave trade was banned, the United States and New York City, in particular, were complicit in allowing it to persist.
A walk-up customer at the door of a minister's marriage license booth in Elkton, Md. during the 1920-30s.

How Elkton Became the Marriage Capital of the East Coast

The story of one small Maryland town that became the Marriage Capital of the East Coast in the 20th century.
Artistic collage of black leaders surrounded by images associated with prohibition.

The Forgotten History of Black Prohibitionism

We often think of the temperance movement as driven by white evangelicals set out to discipline Black Americans and immigrants. That history is wrong.

The Library of Possible Futures

Since the release of "Future Shock" 50 years ago, the allure of speculative nonfiction has remained the same: We all want to know what’s coming next.
Black and white photo of a family sitting around the television together

A Brief History of Consumer Culture

Over the 20th century, capitalism preserved its momentum by molding the ordinary person into a consumer with an unquenchable thirst for more stuff.
Comic with Donald Trump at the head of a White House conference room.

The End of the Businessman President

Donald Trump’s catastrophic tenure will be the nail in the coffin of the worst idea in politics: that the government can be run like a corporation.
Thorstein Veblen

The Gadfly of American Plutocracy

Far from a marginal outsider, a new biography contends, Thorstein Veblen was the most important economic thinker of the Gilded Age.
Abandoned Howard Johnson's restaurant overgrown with vegetation.

Howard Johnson’s, Host of the Bygone Ways

For more than seven decades American roads were dotted with the familiar orange roof and blue cupola of the ubiquitous Howard Johnson’s restaurants and Motor Lodges.

Lamb to the Slaughter

The rise and fall of the Brooks Brothers name.

The History of the USPS and the Politics of Postal Reform

Reform was framed as a way of removing “politics” from postal affairs and giving more autonomy to postal management. In time, it would prove to do neither.
Side by side portraits of LL Cool J and John D. Rockefeller, both sitting with left leg crossed over right, right hand on leg.

How a Maverick Hip-Hop Legend Found Inspiration in a Titan of American Industry

When LL Cool J sat for his portrait, he found common ground with the life-long philanthropical endeavors of John D. Rockefeller.
Woman walking past a mural of Frederick Douglass
partner

Lessons for Sustaining Black Businesses After a Crisis

Private coalitions alone aren’t enough to address racial wealth gaps.
An illustration of a Good Humor ice cream truck with an ice cream man standing next to it, waving. They are surrounded by ice cream products.

The History of the Ice Cream Truck

As innovations go, the Good Humor vehicle is as sweet as it gets.
partner

Public Health Isn’t The Enemy of Economic Well-Being

As 19th century reformers showed, only a healthy workforce can fuel economic prosperity.

If You Think Quarantine Life Is Weird Today, Try Living It in 1918

From atomizer crazes to stranded actor troupes to school by phone, daily life during the flu pandemic was a trip.

Slavery Documents from Southern Saltmakers Bring Light to Dark History

For one West Virginia community, the acquisition is a missing puzzle piece to questions about slavery in the state.

Madame Yale Made a Fortune With the 19th Century's Version of Goop

A century before today’s celebrity health gurus, an American businesswoman was a beauty with a brand.
High risk, high return investments in whaling ships, such as the New Bedford, Massachusetts, provided a model for modern venture capital. Courtesy New Bedford Whaling Museum.

Venture Capital Builds The Modern World

The American method of high-risk, potentially high-reward investments has fueled innovation from New England whaling ventures to Silicon Valley start-ups.
Drawing of a lightbulb illuminating an inventor's laboratory.

The Real Nature of Thomas Edison’s Genius

The inventor did not look for problems in need of solutions; he looked for solutions in need of modification.

Amid a Revival of Anti-Monopoly Sentiment, a New Book Traces Its History

Matt Stoller charts the shifts in American attitudes toward corporate consolidation.
Alan Greenspan holding his right hand up to speak under oath, with an eagle seal on the wall behind him.

When Alan Met Ayn: "Atlas Shrugged" and Our Tanked Economy

We owe at least part of the 2008 financial crisis to Ayn Rand's philosophy of objectivism.
Big League Chew’s inaugural package in 1980.

How a Minor League Pitcher Turned a Dugout Conversation Into the Legend That Is Big League Chew

The inventor, who baked the first batch of the iconic gum 40 years ago, talks about the genesis of an American rite of passage.

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