Leland Stanford

A new history examines Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, the West Coast's settler ideology, and recent turbulence in the world of tech.

The region has been in the disruption business for nearly 150 years.

The railroad baron and governor of California was starkly contradictory and infamously disruptive.

The ruthless logic driving our economy can be traced back to 19th-century Palo Alto.

Two new books reveal the story of Stanford University’s early years to be rife with corruption, autocracy, incompetence, white supremacy, and murder.

From Stanford to Silicon Valley, a small town in California spread tech’s gospel of data and control.

Authorities who investigated Jane Stanford’s mysterious death said the wealthy widow had no enemies. A new book finds that she had many.

Letters, diaries, and remembrances shared on JSTOR by University of the Pacific reveal the hardships of day-to-day life during the California Gold Rush.

Two recent books illuminate the dark foundations of Silicon Valley.

A new history dispenses with the sentimental lore and examines how Palo Alto has long been the seedbed for exploitation, chaos, and ecological degradation.

The state wants to severely limit what professors can say in the classroom.

Many of the ­private colleges and universities in the US arose as much out of vanity as necessity. But for morbid narcissism, nothing comes close to Stanford.

When horses gallop, do all four hooves ever leave the ground at once? This episode of The Disappearing Spoon recounts the saga that led to the answer.

Long before Trump, politicians on the country’s West Coast mobilized a white working-class base through violent hate of Chinese and Japanese immigrants.

The untold story of the ideological realignment that upended the nation.

How a farcical series of events in the 1880s produced an enduring and controversial legal precedent.

On May 10th, 1869, the entire nation was waiting for the moment a silver hammer struck a golden spike, creating the first massive breaking news story.