Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor is Professor of History and Associate Dean for Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Scholars at the University of California, Davis. This interview is based on her new book, America Under the Hammer: Auctions and the Emergence of Market Values (University […]
economic history
The Author’s Corner with Justene Hill Edwards
Justene Hill Edwards is Associate Professor of History at the University of Virginia. This interview is based on her new book, Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman’s Bank (W. W. Norton & Company, 2024). JF: What led […]
The Author’s Corner with Mary Bridges
Mary Bridges is an Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. This interview is based on her new book, Dollars and Dominion: US Bankers and the Making of a […]
Heather Richardson: “William McKinley is having a moment”
From “Letters from an American“: William McKinley is having a moment (which I confess is a sentence I never expected to write). Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is elevating McKinley, representative from Ohio from 1877 to 1891 and president from […]
The Author’s Corner with Michael J. Douma
Michael J. Douma is Associate Professor in the McDonough School of Business and Director of the Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics at Georgetown University. This interview is based on his new book, The Slow Death of […]
The Author’s Corner with Brian Judge
Brian Judge is a Policy Fellow at the Center for Human-Compatible AI at the University of California, Berkeley. This interview is based on his new book, Democracy in Default: Finance and the Rise of Neoliberalism in America (Columbia University Press, 2024). JF: […]
The Author’s Corner with Shaun S. Nichols
Shaun S. Nichols is Assistant Professor of History at Boise State University. This interview is based on his new book, Manufacturing Catastrophe: Massachusetts and the Making of Global Capitalism, 1813 to the Present (Oxford University Press, 2024). JF: What led […]
The Author’s Corner with Thomas Blake Earle
Thomas Blake Earle is Assistant Professor of History at Texas A&M University at Galveston. This interview is based on his new book, The Liberty to Take Fish: Atlantic Fisheries and Federal Power in Nineteenth-Century America (Cornell University Press, 2023). JF: […]
The Author’s Corner with Farley Grubb
Farley Grubb is Professor of Economics at the University of Delaware and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). This interview is based on his new book, The Continental Dollar: How the American Revolution Was Financed by […]
The Author’s Corner with Richard N. Langlois
Richard N. Langlois is Professor of Economics at the University of Connecticut. This interview is based on his new book, The Corporation and the Twentieth Century: The History of American Business Enterprise (Princeton University Press, 2023). JF: What led you […]
The Author’s Corner with Bart Elmore
Bart Elmore is Professor of Environmental History at The Ohio State University. This interview is based on his new book, Country Capitalism: How Corporations from the American South Remade Our Economy and the Planet (University of North Carolina Press, 2023). […]
Capitalist waste
Here is The George Washington University historian Trevor Jackson at The Baffler: EVERYONE RECALLS THE SHORTAGESÂ of toilet paper and pasta, but the early period of the pandemic was also a time of gluts. With restaurants and school cafeterias shuttered, farmers […]
The Author’s Corner with Sharon Ann Murphy
Sharon Ann Murphy is Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History and Classics at Providence College. This interview is based on her new book, Banking on Slavery: Financing Southern Expansion in the Antebellum United States (University of Chicago […]
The class conflict at the heart of the American Revolution
Over at Jacobin, historian William Hogeland discusses his ongoing work on “workers” and “elites” in the late eighteenth century. Here is a taste of his interview with Astra Taylor: ASTRA TAYLOR: Can you talk about what your narrative of America’s […]
The Author’s Corner with Lori J. Daggar
Lori J. Daggar is Associate Professor of History at Ursinus College. This interview is based on her new book, Cultivating Empire: Capitalism, Philanthropy, and the Negotiation of American Imperialism in Indian Country (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022). JF: What led […]
The Author’s Corner with Peter Swenson
Peter Swenson is Charlotte Marion Saden Professor of Political Science and Professor in the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University. This interview is based on his new book, Disorder: A History of Reform, Reaction, and Money in […]
The Author’s Corner with Hannah Farber
Hannah Farber is Assistant Professor of History at Columbia University. This interview is based on her new book, Underwriters of the United States: How Insurance Shaped the American Founding (Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press, 2021). JF: What […]
The Author’s Corner with Gabriel Loiacono
Gabriel Loiacono is Associate Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh. This interview is based on his new book, How Welfare Worked in the Early United States: Five Microhistories (Oxford University Press, 2021). JF: What led you to write How […]
Historian Lizabeth Cohen on why Americans love to shop
Here is the Harvard historian‘s recent interview with NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly: KELLY: We’re glad to have you with us. I want to go back and try to figure out how this started that Americans became such champion consumers. And […]
The Author’s Corner with Jared Hardesty
Jared Hardesty is Assistant Professor of History at Western Washington University. This interview is based on his new book, Mutiny on the Rising Sun: A Tragic Tale of Slavery, Smuggling, and Chocolate (NYU Press, 2021). JF: What led you to […]