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Map of Mexico
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Birth of a Trade War

The Mexican origins of the birth control pill, and the trade dispute with the U.S. it generated.
Marine hospital

Sailors’ Health and National Wealth

That the federal government created this health care system for merchant mariners in the early American republic will surprise many.
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.
Photograph of cars bumper to bumper on a highway, USA (year unknown, likely during 1970s energy crisis)

How Congress Planned To Solve The 1970s Energy Crisis

Representative Mo Udall's ambitious strategy to wean the United States off fossil fuels by the year 2000.
WPA poster for the City of New York Department of Docks, showing smokestack of ship and cargo being loaded.
Exhibit

International Trade

Histories of how money and commodities have flowed across borders, from the slave-based economies of maritime empires to contemporary globalization.

View of New Amsterdam from the 1620s.

The Dutch Roots of American Liberty

New York would never be the Puritans' austere city on a hill, yet it became America’s vibrant heart of capitalism.
Harvester on farmland.

America’s Pernicious Rural Myth

An interview with Steven Conn about his new book, “Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural America for What It Is—and Isn’t.”
French Gen. Jean de Rochambeau and American Gen. George Washington giving the last orders in October 1781 for the battle at Yorktown.

How Allies Have Helped the US Gain Independence, Defend Freedom and Keep the Peace

Why should a country want or need allies? President Donald Trump and his followers seem to disdain the idea. So did George Washington.
Sheet music for W.C. Handy’s St. Louis Blues, 1925, featuring blue and white images of Louis Armstrong.

Imani Perry’s Blue Notes

Her new book tells the story of Black people through an exploration of the color blue.
Jimmy Carter and General Omar Torrijos shake hands after signing the Panama Canal Treaty in 1977

The Panama Canal Treaty Declassified

Kissinger warned: “This is no issue to face the world on. It looks like pure colonialism.”
A map dedication from Osgood Carlton "to the select men of the town of Boston" in 1795.

Practical Knowledge and the New Republic

Osgood Carleton and his forgotten 1795 map of Boston.
Trump holding a table of tariff rates.
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Tariffs Don’t Have to Make Economic Sense to Appeal to Trump Voters

Economists and Democrats dismiss Trump’s tariffs talk at their peril.
Drawing of the Constitutional Convention, by John W. Winkler.
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Strange Political Bedfellows

The origins of the Electoral College are entwined with slavery, but not in the way that recent accounts have suggested.
Three workers taking a break inside a salt mine in the 1940s.

Salt of the Earth

In Winn Parish, an ancient salt dome has sustained life for centuries.
William McKinley

Trump Is Right About McKinley

“The most underrated president” was a model of successful governance in a world in flux.
"The Book of Jewish Food" by Claudia Roden.

The Desk Dispatch: Layla Schlack on What Jewish Food Means to Her

"Frustratingly, Talmudically, Jewish food is simply what Jews eat," she writes.
Collage depicting shipping containers, a scale weighing American dollars, and a screen of numbers and percentages

Free Trade's Origin Myth

American elites accepted the economic theory of "comparative advantage" mainly because it justified their geopolitical agenda.
A faux Brazilian village constructed for Henry II and Catherine de’ Medici on the banks of the Seine in Rouen, France, and inhabited by fifty Tupinambá people who were forcibly brought there from Brazil, 1550.

The Discovery of Europe

A new book investigates the indigenous Americans who were brought to or traveled to Europe in the 1500s—a story central to the beginning of globalization.
President Clinton walks with Jiang Zemin past rows of Chinese soldiers.

It’s the Global Economy, Stupid

A new book on the Clinton presidency reveals how it abandoned a progressive vision for a finance-led agenda for economics and geopolitics.
Cotton plants.

Understanding Capitalism Through Cotton

Looking at the development of cotton as a global commodity helps us understand how capitalism emerged.
Sea Captains drinking alcohol

Ships Going Out

In "American Slavers," Sean M. Kelley surveys the relatively unknown history of Americans who traded in slaves in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Imperial Daiquiri

The Imperial Daiquiri: A Brief History of American Empire in One Cocktail

From the Spanish-American War to modern cocktail bars, the daiquiri has a long legacy entangled with US imperialism in the Caribbean.
An ad for a runaway slave in the Virginia Gazette, describing Thomas Greenwich, an "East-India Indian."
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“Of the East India Breed …”

The first South Asians in British North America.
Painting of Noritoshi Kanai and Harry Wolff Jr. and various sushi preparations, by Yuko Shimizu.

How Two Friends Sparked L.A.’s Sushi Obsession — and Changed the Way America Eats

An unlikely pair of Southern California businessmen paved the way for the sushi revolution in Los Angeles, upending American dining — and their own lives.
1970s commercial airplane flying over a mountain range

How 1970s California Created the Modern World

What happened in California in the 1970s played an outsized role in creating the world we live in today – both in the United States and globally.
Samuel Cummings holding a gun in a lab.

The Last Honest Mercenary in the Business

International arms dealer Samuel Cummings blanketed the Western Hemisphere with guns.
A roll of cotton thread in the shape of an eye.

Slavery and the Guardian: The Ties That Bind Us

There is an illusion at the centre of British history that conceals the role of slavery in building the nation. Here’s how I fell for it.
A boat makes a morning trip through the Erie Canal in Rochester, New York, October 2021.

A Brief History of the Erie Canal

The waterway opened up the heartland to trade, transforming small hamlets into industrial centers.
Painting of the US army entering the city of Guadalupe Hildaglo

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: Annotated

Signed February 2, 1848, the treaty compelled Mexico to cede 55 percent of its territory, bringing more than 525,000 square miles under US sovereignty.
Illustration of U.S. bomber droping brick to form a wall (representing sanctions).

The Folly of Sanctions

Sanctions were conceived as an alternative to war. But they may have made the world more violent.
The first informal meeting of the League of Nations in Geneva, 1920.

Do Sanctions Work?

A new history examines their use in the past and considers their effectiveness for the future.

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