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...
economic history
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...
The Author’s Corner with Jonathan Barth
Jonathan Barth is Assistant Professor of History at Arizona State University. This interview is based on his new book, The Currency of Empire: Money and Power in Seventeenth-Century English America (Cornell University Press, 2021). JF: What led you to write The...
What did Joe Biden learn from FDR?
He learned that in a time of crisis Americans need direct relief from their national government. Here is historian Suzanne Kahn at The Washington Post: The United States has surpassed an ignominious milestone: 500,000 deaths from covid-19. President Biden has...
What are we getting wrong about Alexander Hamilton’s economic theories?
Over at Boston Review, Michael Busch interviews Christian Parenti, author of Radical Hamilton: Economic Lessons from a Misunderstood Founder. Here is a taste: Michael Busch: You published Radical Hamilton in August with Verso Books. Let’s start at the beginning: Who was Alexander […]
The Economy Over Public Health: It’s an Old Story
KJZZ Radio’s Lauren Gilger recently interviewed historian Peter Mancall. Here is a taste: PETER MANCALL: So the first case happens when the English colonized what we now think was Virginia. It started at Jamestown in 1607. The English arrived there. They’re...
What Can We Learn From the Great Depression?
Here is Harvard historian Lizabeth Cohen at The Atlantic: Americans are out of work. More than 20 million lost their jobs in April alone. Lines at food banks stretch for miles. Businesses across the country are foundering. Headlines scream that the coronavirus...
The Anti-Populists
Thomas Frank‘s recent piece at Harper’s, an excerpt from his forthcoming book, argues that we do not understand the meaning of populism in the age of Trump. The president is not a populist–at least in the historic sense of the...
The Author’s Corner with Brian Luskey
Brian Luskey is Associate Professor of History at West Virginia University. This interview is based on his new book, Men is Cheap: Exposing the Frauds of Free Labor in Civil War America (The University of North Carolina Press, 2020). JF: What led...
Frederick Douglass on Economic Inequality
Historian Matt Karp introduces us to Douglass’s papers “The Accumulation of Wealth” (1856) and “The Land Reformer” (1856). Here is a taste of his introduction at Jacobin: No single document, of course, can solve the riddle of Douglass’s complex political...
The Author’s Corner with Bruce Stewart
Bruce Stewart is Associate Professor of History at Appalachian State University. This interview is based on his new book, Redemption from Tyranny: Herman Husband’s American Revolution (University of Virginia Press, 2020). JF: What led you to write Redemption from Tyranny? BS: I first...
Study: U.S. Billionaires Paid a Lower Tax Rate than the Working Class
In 2018, American billionaires paid a lower tax rate than than the working class. This is the first time in this has ever happened. Here is Chris Ingraham’s piece at The Washington Post: A new book-length study on the tax burden...
Slavery Was America’s First Big Business
Cornell University history professor Ed Baptist talks with Vox‘s P.R. Lockhart about his 2014 book The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. Here is a taste: P.R. Lockhart When you talk about the sort...
Moral Capitalism
Georgetown University historian Michael Kazin points us toward a better way: What kind of economy do Democrats believe in? Joe Biden calls for “stronger labor laws and a tax code that rewards [the] middle class.” Bernie Sanders wants to raise taxes...
The Author’s Corner with Strother Roberts
Strother Roberts is Assistant Professor of History at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. This interview is based on his book Colonial Ecology, Atlantic Economy: Transforming Nature in Early New England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019) JF: What led you to write Colonial...
The Author’s Corner with Lindsay Schakenbach Regele
Lindsay Shakenbach Regele is Assistant Professor of History at Miami University. This interview is based on her new book, Manufacturing Advantage: War, the State, and the Origins of American Industry, 1776-1848 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019). JF: What led you to...