For centuries we’ve believed that work was where you learned discipline, initiative, honesty, self-reliance—in a word, character. A job was also, and not incidentally, the source of your income: if you didn’t work, you didn’t eat, or else you were stealing from someone. If only you worked hard, you could earn your way and maybe […]
During the years when the Revolutionary War transformed thirteen former British colonies into a new nation, a horrifying epidemic of smallpox was transforming—or ending—the lives of tens of thousands of people across the American continent. This great pestilence easily surpassed the war in terms of deaths, yet because of our understandable preoccupation with the Revolution […]
The story of the marriage of Rachel and Andrew Jackson has come down to us as one of the most romantic love stories in American history. But aside from treatment in a chapter of the many biographies of Andrew – Rachel’s story has been barely told. (at least not since Irving Stone’s The President’s Lady!) Although […]
Elizabeth Fenn is professor of history at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She studies and writes about the early American West, focusing on epidemic disease, Native American, and environmental history. Her aim is to develop a continent-wide analysis that incorporates Native Americans as well as African, British, Spanish, French, Dutch, and Russian colonizers into a […]
Edward Gray is the former editor of the interactive journal Common-place, and is the author of several books, including, most recently, Tom Paine’s Iron Bridge, published by W. W. Norton. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Kathleen DuVal called the book “fascinating and important.” Since 1999 he has taught courses in colonial and revolutionary-era American history and […]
Andrew Whitby is an economist with interests in econometrics and data science; and the economics of technology, creativity, innovation and growth. He has been a Data Scientist at the World Bank, working in the Development Data Group of the Chief Economist on all kinds of data questions He holds a PhD in economics from Balliol […]
Marjoleine Kars is an associate professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). As an Atlanticist who hails from the Netherlands, she brings a distinctive set of skills to this study. Fluency in her native Dutch is an obvious prerequisite. But beyond this, she is a specialist in the history of rebellion and dissent. […]
For centuries, western thinking about creativity fixed on the notion of the lone, heroic genius triumphing through sheer force of will and intellect. The new science of ideas set forth in Smart World compels us to finally abandon this view. In its place, Richard Ogle proposes we take an essentially ecological view of the mind in which […]
For two months in the spring of 2016, the world watched as wildfire ravaged the Canadian town of Fort McMurray. Firefighters named the fire “the Beast.” It acted like a mythical animal, alive with destructive energy, and they hoped never to see anything like it again. Yet it’s not a stretch to imagine we will […]
It was a spring day on the Las Vegas strip in 1971 when Ruby Duncan, a former cotton picker turned hotel maid and the mother of seven, led a procession. Followed by an angry army of welfare mothers, they stormed Caesar’s Palace to protest Nevada’s decision to terminate their benefits. The demonstrations went on for […]
In the spring of 1824 in the young capital city of Washington D.C., Ann Mattingly, the sister of the city’s mayor, was miraculously cured of cancer, purportedly through the intervention of a charismatic German cleric. Her miraculous healing shook the American Catholic Church just as it was attempting to establish itself on respectable footing in […]
AnnaLee Saxenian is Dean and Professor in the School of Information Management and Systems (SIMS) and professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. She is an internationally-recognized scholar of regional economic development. Her research on technology regions such as California’s Silicon Valley, Boston’s Route 128, and Cambridge […]
Professor of political science David Welch is the George Ignatieff Chair in Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto. An expert on international crisis and war, his research focuses on national and international security, decision making, intelligence and moral psychology. His book, Justice and the Genesis of War was the winner of the […]
Andrei Hagiu is a Visiting Associate Professor of Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He was previously an Associate Professor in the Strategy unit at Harvard Business School. His research focuses on multi-sided platforms and their unique strategic challenges. His work has been published in the RAND Journal of Economics, Management Science, […]
Timothy J. Shannon is Professor of History at Gettysburg College and the chair of the department of history His scholarship has focused on Native Americans and British peoples in colonial North America. He is the author of several books and his articles have appeared in the William and Mary Quarterly among other publications.