Money

The recent history of copyright in music cannot be separated from the rise of technologies for the recording and transmission of content online.

An interview with Jennifer Burns on her authoritative new biography of the American economist and the personal and intellectual origins of his theories.

Economists and historians have been telling us the wrong story about Continental currency for two centuries.

Introducing a project on US labor history, exploring what we can learn from 1930s-1950s industrial struggles.

The slow unraveling of a nation’s suburbs.

How to thrive in the power élite—while declaring it your enemy.

Without smart regulation, price competition turns into a race to the bottom.

A formerly dominant American retail chain nears extinction.

A new book shows that Uber was a symbol of a neoliberal philosophy that neglected public funding and regulation in favor of rule by private corporations.

The economist’s lifelong pugilism wasn’t in spite of his success—it may have been the key to it.

The indoor suburban shopping center is a special kind of abandoned place.

If history had taken another path, bar codes would look dramatically different today.

American elites accepted the economic theory of "comparative advantage" mainly because it justified their geopolitical agenda.

Samuel W. Franklin’s latest book explains how we sold ourselves out to a fake virtue.

George Leonidas Leslie is still waiting for his HBO series.

An irresistible trend took hold 50 years ago, and we’re all paying the price.

Recovering the long-overlooked significance of the “hillbilly highway” in the US, with implications for labor history as well as US history broadly.

Attacks on private property enraged Colonial leaders and the British public, hardening positions and ruling out compromise.

What the tech pioneer can, and can’t, teach us.

The Southern Tenant Farmers Union was founded on the principle of interracial organizing.

Ronald Reagan's economic policies exacerbated the racial wealth gap— and they've guided all his successors.

In its early days, Coca-Cola established key relationships in the supply chain ranging from natural resources to pharmaceuticals to achieve market dominance.

The Icarians thought they could build a paradise, but their project was marked by failure almost from the start.

Jefferson's vision of the family farm is a myth that won't die.

Was the country’s turn toward free-market fundamentalism driven by race, class, or something else? Yes.

Historians depict late 19th-century American business elites as agents of progress, but many of them could also be called “terrorists.”

Union workers in the US weapons industry present a paradox for anti-war labor activists, but a history of “conversion” campaigns offers a route.

Often dismissed as a “trash fish,” the porgy is an anchor of Black maritime culture.

The strange and contradicting development of the liberal version of egalitarianism.

How corporations wrested creative control from writers and editors—to produce less interesting books.