steam power

A cautionary tale about the costs and benefits of public/private partnerships.

On the nineteenth-century artists and thinkers who pictured a future of abundance powered by steam.

Restoring the term “burnout” to its roots in landlord arson puts the dispossession of poor city dwellers at its center.

The overlooked first mentor of Thomas Jefferson.

For nearly 200 years after the founding of New York, the city struggled to establish a clean source of fresh water.

"Masterless Men" shows how the antebellum political economy made poor southern whites into a volatile, and potentially disruptive, class.

In the 19th century, Americans abandoned one source of dirty energy. Can they do it again?