Poop emojis against a yellow backdrop.

Brown Stage Capitalism

Cory Doctorow’s ‘Enshittification’ describes how tech platforms (and everything else) went down the sewer. Hint: It rhymes with ‘deshmegulation.’

America’s Greatest Mistake

Globalization left millions behind as a policy and transformed the world politically, a new book argues.
Firefighter fighting the Thomas fire in 2017.

The Disasters ‘High-Risk’ Insurance Fails to Paper Over

From the Watts Riots to 2025 wildfires, California’s FAIR Plan has stood in the way of transformative change.
Nervous stock traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in 2008.
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The 2008 Financial Crisis Explained: Housing Bubble to Bailout

Risky loans, regulatory gaps, and Wall Street practices fueled the 2008 financial crisis and led to the Great Recession.
An anti-capitalist political cartoon depicting a capitalist rhinoceros blocking the tracks for a train of the people.

How Capitalism Survives

According to John Cassidy’s century-spanning history "Capitalism and Its Critics," the system lives on because of its antagonists.
President-elect Franklin Roosevelt and Raymond Moley in February 1933.

The New Deal's Radical Uncertainty

The New Deal didn’t solve the economic problems behind the Great Depression—it made them worse.
Georgia Bulldog Football team warms up at their stadium.

A Historian’s Notes on College Football’s New Money Era

College football’s NIL era has freed athletes but fueled chaos, soaring costs, and fan backlash.
First Houses public housing in New York.

Land Value Politics

What New York City can learn from its past about the potential for urban growth that is not hostage to the preferences of the largest private owners.
ILGWU parade float bearing the union label, December 7, 1960.

Look for the Union Label

Clothing labels have often played a political role in the fight for the rights of garment workers.
Andrew Mellon
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This 1920s Treasury Secretary Helped Big Business Drive the Economy

The economic vision of American industrialist Andrew Mellon loomed large over the boom and bust of the 1920s.
Cover of "Born In Flames" book.

Incendiary Schemes

A new book reveals systematic, profitable, and deadly arson schemes perpetrated by landlords and insurance companies in the Bronx.

America’s Coal Age

Black gold powered the United States’ transition from backwater to global hegemon.
A large house in a suburb.

How the Government Built the American Dream House

U.S. housing policy claims to promote homeownership. Instead, it encourages high prices, sprawl, and NIMBYism.
Young mother, St. Ann's Ave at E. 140th St., Bronx, 1977
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Life in the Firestorm

The 21st century American city was forged in the embers of the 1970s arson wave.
Men unloading imported goods from a ship to waiting horse carts.

Biff-Bang: Tariffs Before Trump

Trump's tariffs echo centuries of global protectionism, but history and economics question their effectiveness and long-term value.
Minerva Parker Nichols; the New Century Club building she designed in Philadelphia.
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(Re)discovering Minerva Parker Nichols, Architect

The first American woman to establish an independent architectural practice, Minerva Parker Nichols built an unprecedented career in Philadelphia.
Elon Musk wields a 'chainsaw for bureaucracy' on stage before speaking at CPAC.

Beyond Markets: A Conversation with Quinn Slobodian

How the New Right emerged from neoliberalism’s inner split.
A Commodore 64 keyboard.

The Challenge of Selling the First Personal Computers

Back when few people could imagine why they would want to buy a bulky, expensive machine with no obvious purpose, computer marketers had to get creative.
A white hand gives a key to another white hand, bypassing a Black hand.

What We Miss When We Talk About the Racial Wealth Gap

Six decades of civil-rights efforts haven’t budged the racial wealth gap, and the usual prescriptions—including reparations—offer no lasting solutions.
A Farm Security Administration representative visits Seabrook Farms in New Jersey in May 1938.

Destiny of the Dispossessed Spinach Prince

John Seabrook’s history of Seabrook Farms, where many incarcerated Japanese Americans worked during WWII, is ultimately about fathers and sons.
Photo of Karl Marx

Red Like Me

A new book shows that Marxism in the US "was never constrained to the reiteration of a set of dogmatic principles one associates with party ideologues."
The four Harper Brothers, founders of the namesake publishing giant.
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The 200 Year History of American Virtue Capitalism

Despite the recent backlash against DEI, there is a longstanding tradition of virtue capitalism in the United States.
Spectators in the stands and lining the outfield to watch a baseball game.
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Take Me Out to the Class Game: Social Stratification in the Stadium

The private boxes for the privileged few in today’s baseball stadiums are nothing new.
New York skyline viewed from the top of the Woolworth building, 1913.

A Brief History of New York’s First Great Architectural Firm

On the eccentric, creative minds behind McKim, Meade and White.
Union leaders William Green, Hugo Ernst, and George Meany.

The War on Communists in the Hotel Workers’ Union

The rise and fall of Communists in New York’s hotel union reveals how socialists gained, wielded, and ultimately lost power in the U.S. labor movement.
A newspaper reports that only 1 in 3 Americans support Kennedy's goal to land on the moon, per Gallup.

Most of America Opposed the Moon Landing

Before that "giant leap for mankind" Americans weren't so enthusiastic.
A former coal miner works at a computer station at the Bit Source LLC office in Pikeville, Kentucky

The Rise and Fall of the Knowledge Worker

Knowledge workers, were supposed to be the beneficiaries of neoliberalism and globalization until AI and a hypercompetitive employment market.
Union workers hold American flags and a sign reading "No work without a fair contract."

Requiem for the Wagner Act

Signed into law 90 years ago, labor’s onetime ‘magna carta’ is now a very dead letter.
Samuel Gompers the president of the American Federation of Labor in December 1920.

America’s Brutal Capitalist Class Tamed Its Labor Movement

The unique brutality of the US capitalist class bred a labor movement that has often limited itself to being a private insurance provider.
A protestor holds up a sign which reads "tax the rich."
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The Founders Knew Great Wealth Inequality Could Destroy Us

At the founding of America, leaders predicted that a concentration of wealth would weaken the republic.