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How our Appetite for Cheap Food Drove Rural America to Trump

Consumer demand and government policy decimated rural America.
Franklin Roosevelt in front of news microphones.

The Rise and Fall of the Word 'Monopoly' in American Life

For several decades, the term was a fixture of newspaper headlines and campaign speeches. Then something changed.

Victorian Era Drones: How Model Trains Transformed from Cutting-Edge to Quaint

Nostalgia and technological innovation paved the way for the rise of model-train giant Lionel.
Alexander Hamilton

The Hamilton Hustle

Why liberals have embraced our most dangerously reactionary founder.
Political cartoon depicting Standard Oil as an octopus.

When Did Americans Stop Being Antimonopoly?

Columbia professor Richard R. John explains the history of U.S. monopolies and why antimonopoly should not be conflated with antitrust.

The Internet Should Be a Public Good

The Internet was built by public institutions — so why is it controlled by private corporations?
Two kids eating ice cream

Thanks, Prohibition!

How the Eighteenth Amendment fueled America’s taste for ice cream.
Empty plastic bottles to be recycled.
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Cashing In

How big business lies behind early efforts to encourage Americans to recycle.
Studio photo of a preacher officiating a wedding, as the best man, flower girls, and ring bearer watch, 1908.
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Goin’ to the Chapel

Before there was Vegas, there was Elkton, Maryland. Let's take a trip to this tiny town and tell the story of its former life as elopement capital of the US.
Interactive map (above) and graph (below) showing the canals of the American Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, 1820 to 1860.
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Canals 1820-1890

An interactive map of U.S. canals in the first half of the 19th century.

By Which Melancholy Occurrence: The Disaster Prints of Nathaniel Currier, 1835–1840

Why Americans living in uncertain times bought so many sensational images of shipwrecks and fires.
Black family sitting around log cabin, possibly in Florida, 1892.

Plantations Practiced Modern Management

Slaveholding plantations of the 19th century used scientific management techniques—and some applied them more extensively than factories.
A photograph of a Pony Express employee riding a horse.
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Cowboys and Mailmen

Debunking myths about the Pony Express.
A man at a Tea Party rally in 2010, dressed in colonial clothes and standing in front of a Don't Treat On Me flag with his fist raised.
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Teed Off

Did the 2010 Tea Party Movement really have anything in common with 1773? What did the history of populism suggest about the Tea Party's future?
Trucks and cars moving on the highway

Keep on Truckin’

The road to right-wing deregulation began on our nation's highways.
Cubicles

The Moral Life of Cubicles

On the utopian origins of Dilbert's workspace.
Prescott Bush, Dorothy Bush, and George H. W. Bush at the White House.

How Bush's Grandfather Helped Hitler's Rise to Power

Rumors of a link between Prescott Bush and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. They were right.

Bitter Harvest

The fear and hysteria that led to Japanese interment during World War II was manufactured for corporate profit.

When Big Oil Was "The Great Vampire Squid" Wrapped Around America

Robert Engler's award-winning 1955 investigation into the oil industry.
Jeffrey Epstein and unidentified African soldiers.

Epstein, Israel, and the CIA: How The Iran–Contra Planes Landed at Les Wexner’s Base

Jeffrey Epstein helped Leslie Wexner repurpose the CIA’s Iran–Contra planes from arms smuggling to shipping lingerie.
David Rubenstein looks toward the Washington Monument.

When Donald Trump Fired David Rubenstein

The private-equity billionaire spent decades building influence in the capital. Then his philanthropy collided with the president.
Sunday Morning in front of the Arch Street Meeting House, Philadelphia, 1811
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Quakers Against Thanksgiving

In colonial America, government “thanksgivings” blurred faith and politics. For Quakers, rejecting them was an act of religious conviction.
Illustration of draping a Pizza Hut tarp over the Hammer and Sickle.

Pizzastroika

In 1990, one of the great forgotten acts of American subterfuge unfolded. It involved Pizza Hut.
An illustration of a Black woman elf in a fantasy setting.

Why Elon Musk Needs Dungeons & Dragons to Be Racist

The fantastical roots of “scientific racism.”
Theodore Roosevelt speaking with three reporters.
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The President and the Press Corps

Theodore Roosevelt was the first White House occupant to seek control over how newspapers covered him.
Charles Mitchell

The Lesson of 1929

Debt is the almost singular through line behind every major financial crisis.
Screen shots and captions from a public service campaign about the economy.

The Ad Campaign for Capitalism

In the 1970s, corporate America struck back at the forces attempting to rein it in. One of their tactics was a public service announcement.
Military members exercising at a CrossFit gym.

CrossFit and the Frontier Spirit

The gunslinging mojo of a fitness craze.
A cassette copy of the film soundtrack for "Until the End of the World."

The Last Time I Rewound

VHS, Star Wars, and the freedom to remember.
Efka Pyramiden cigarette papers in a green packaging sleeve made in Nazi Germany.
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Papering Over History

Efka—the German rolling paper company—was a Nazi regime favorite. After World War II, it was refashioned as a darling of the pot-infused counterculture.

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