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Fall/Winter 1957 Sears catalog page spread of men's work clothes.

Before Folding 30 Years Ago, the Sears Catalog Sold Some Surprising Products

The retail giant’s mail-order business reigned supreme for more than a century, offering everything from quack cures to ready-to-build homes.
by Leo DeLuca via Smithsonian on January 26, 2023

Sears’s ‘Radical’ Past

How mail-order catalogues subverted the racial hierarchy of Jim Crow.
by Antonia Noori Farzan via Washington Post on October 16, 2018

The History of Sears Predicts Nearly Everything Amazon Is Doing

100 years ago, a mail-order retail giant moved swiftly into the brick-and-mortar business, changing it forever.
by Derek Thompson via The Atlantic on September 25, 2017

How Sears Industrialized, Suburbanized, and Fractured the American Economy

The iconic retail giant turned thrift into profit, but couldn’t keep pace with modern consumer culture.
by Vicki Howard via Zócalo Public Square on July 20, 2017
Portrait of Julius Rosenwald hanging on a wall.

Finding Philanthropy’s Forgotten Founder

Julius Rosenwald understood that charity is not just about giving, but about fixing the inequalities that make giving necessary.
by Darren Walker via The Atlantic on September 9, 2024

How Congress Used the Post Office to Unite the Nation

Trump says Amazon is scamming the USPS. But its low shipping rates were a game changer for rural America.
by Stephen Mihm via Bloomberg on April 4, 2018
A K-mart store

Kmart Elegy

A formerly dominant American retail chain nears extinction.
by Addison Del Mastro via Bulwark+ on January 19, 2024
Grant Wood’s sister, Nan Wood Graham, and his dentist, Byron McKeeby, stand by the painting for which they had posed, “American Gothic.”

Beyond the Myth of Rural America

Its inhabitants are as much creatures of state power and industrial capitalism as their city-dwelling counterparts.
by Daniel Immerwahr via The New Yorker on October 16, 2023
DR. JOHN J. CRAVEN, MEDICAL DIRECTOR OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH AND THE PHYSICIAN WHO LATER ATTENDED JEFFERSON DAVIS, PERFORMS AN OPERATION DURING THE 1863 SIEGE OF CHARLESTON. THE DOCTOR APPEARS TO BE APPLYING A SPLINT TO THE LEG OF A PATIENT WHILE A MAN BEHIND HIM SEEMS TO BE HOLDING A WHITE COTTON CLOTH, LIKELY SOAKED IN CHLOROFORM, OVER THE PATIENT'S MOUTH AND FACE. | LOCATION: MORRIS ISLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA, CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA. (PHOTO BY CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES)

America Has Been Through An Opioid Crisis Before

America’s first opioid crisis came after its bloodiest war, but the lessons of the original debacle have been lost in history.
by Jonathan S. Jones via Vice on April 9, 2021
Pleasant Plains School in Hertford County, North Carolina, active 1920-1950.

How the Rosenwald Schools Shaped a Generation of Black Leaders

Photographer Andrew Feiler documented how the educational institutions shaped a generation of black leaders.
by Michael J. Solender via Smithsonian on March 30, 2021

Officer Friendly and the Invention of the “Good Cop”

If your childhood vision of police is all pet rescues and tinfoil badges, Friendly’s “copaganda” did its job.
by Rebecca Onion via Slate on August 27, 2020
Santa in a rocket sleigh.

A Wonderful Life

How postwar Christmas embraced spaceships, nukes, and cellophane.
by Sarah Archer, Lisa Hix via Collectors Weekly on December 15, 2016

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