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The U.S. was once the world’s most geographically mobile society. Now we’re stuck in place—and that’s a very big problem.

From kosher butchers, fruit peddlers, and herring dealers on the Lower East Side to supermarket innovators across the country

Trump, Xi Jinping, and the tariffs.

You’re passionate. Purpose-driven. Dreaming big, working hard, making it happen. And now they’ve got you where they want you.

The Ordinance, which prioritized cars on the city’s roadways, quickly became the template for the country.

A new theory of the leisure class influencer.

Even Trump’s recent assertion that he would use executive action to abolish birthright citizenship has a historical link to the Chinese American experience.

In every generation, charlatans come along with a plan to make education better by spending less money on schools.

As a worker in the 1970s, I looked forward to a Jimmy Carter administration. By the end of his term in office, I felt betrayed.

Karen Silkwood death and smear campaign highlights how retaliation against whistleblowers deflects scrutiny from power by targeting the messenger.

Carlyle Group founder David Rubenstein has cultivated a reputation as a well-meaning advocate of history education. What does that image mask?

UnitedHealthcare, the health insurer whose CEO was murdered, has spent decades fighting and winning political battles to maintain the for-profit health system.

By universalizing their own economic history, Western observers have used the past to portray African economic culture as backward and inadequate.

Construction workers pooled their wages to erect the first one. Their bosses co-opted the gesture, transforming it into today’s consumer spectacle.

Why Netflix looks like that.

The ruling class used false claims about white women’s sexual virtue to regulate sexuality. But the “white slavery” panic was also about race, class and labor.

The story of credit cards is the story of industry versus regulators. Industry won.

When R.E. Buster Williams ruled jukeboxes and jukeboxes ruled music.

An Eisenhower-era initiative holds key lessons for Trump’s immigration policy.

A 1940s child nutrition program has been a subject of debate for decades, reflecting shifting political priorities.

Many of us do not go gentle into that good night.

On both sides of the color line, to own one’s home remains synonymous with freedom—even as real estate has proven itself to be relentlessly unequal.

How a federal policy change in the 1980s created the modern food desert.

Using film and advertising to sell capitalism and nationalism to immigrants in the early 20th century.

A new book considers the challenges of controlling the commercialization of college sports.

A comprehensive new study found that the socioeconomic makeup of highly selective colleges is roughly the same as it was a century ago.

Why “Let’s have public schools like the Founding Fathers had” is such a terrible idea.

Chinese immigrants sacrificed to create America's first transcontinental railroad. Its completion contributed to a backlash that led to immigration clampdown.

Are we doomed to repetition? It’s something I worry about.

Americans love games of chance, but history shows they're a poor substitute for a robust investment in public goods.