Money

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.

Scott Spillman reviews Seth Rockman’s “Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery.”

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.

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.

Trump's second term echoes 19th-century policies: tariffs and immigration limits protect workers, while deregulation risks widening inequality.

Despite having their citizenship withheld before the war, Chinese American women in the Bay Area made significant contributions to the wartime labor force.

The emergence of student loan debt in the late 1960s can be situated within a broader shift towards neoliberal governance.

In the 1920s, advertisers tried to convince women to exercise their political power not only at the ballot box but also in the store.

The forgotten history of the Lloyd-La Follette Act and of whistleblowing in the federal workforce.

Inside the weird synergies that launched the videogaming industry—and made the Pentagon fantasies in Call of Duty its stock in trade.

Economists and Democrats dismiss Trump’s tariffs talk at their peril.

In "Counterrevolution," Melinda Cooper reads the 1970s economic crisis as an elite revolt rather than proof of the New Deal order’s unsustainability.

The tariffs he keeps babbling about didn’t make that decade great. They helped usher in a depression.

Researchers measured lawmakers’ wealth and found that those whose Southern ancestors owned slaves before abolition have a higher net worth today.

Dr. Bronner blends spirituality, ethical consumerism, and social activism, aiming to support both community and environmental causes through “All-One” values.

A new film examines Trump's formative years under the tutelage of Roy Cohn.