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Black and white headshot of author Livia Gershon

Livia Gershon

Livia Gershon is a freelance writer in Nashua, New Hampshire. Her writing has appeared in publications including Salon, Aeon Magazine and the Good Men Project. Contact her on Twitter @liviagershon.

babies healthcare
Health

The First Health Insurance Policies Helped Reduce Infant Mortality

Some early healthcare history shows the effect of insurance plans: lower infant morality and better standards across the board.
Mansion of Happiness board game
Education & Society

Gamification, Then and Now

Nineteenth-century board games help to map public morality, from religious virtue to upward mobility.
Tiananmen Square
Business & Economics

Will Engagement in the Middle East Change China?

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah visits China this month, marking China’s increasing involvement in the Middle East. China has long had a Muslim minority group.
Cotton gin
Business

Automation in the 1940s Cotton Fields

Automation is a bit of a Rorschach test for anyone interested in workers’ rights. In the 1940s, the mechanization of cotton farming changed the US economy.
Michael Galinksy super tv mall
Business

The Rise and Fall of the Shopping Mall

Is the shopping mall a thing of the past? A look at how the suburbs helped to create the mall--and what is now killing those same shopping centers.
Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe) and Gloria Allred
Politics & Government

The History of Outlawing Abortion in America

Abortion was first criminalized in the U.S. in the mid-19th century. A key argument was that too many white women were ending their pregnancies.
Department of Education headquarters, 2008
Education

Does the U.S. Need a Department of Education?

The U.S. Department of Education has been controversial since President Jimmy Carter started it in 1979. Now many are wondering if it needs to exist.
The Death of General Mercer at the Battle of Princeton, January 3, 1777
Politics & History

Immigration and National Security on George Washington’s Day

Presuming that immigration was a boon to national security, U.S. borders remained mostly open for the first century of the nation’s existence.
corn harvest
Business & Economics

Why Do We Have “Free Trade” For Televisions, But Not For Corn?

While the U.S. opens industries to market competition at home and abroad, we give our agricultural producers a lot of protection, including big subsidies.
Jordan Motor Car Company
Business

How Car Ads Started Selling Sizzle

In the 1920s car ads began changing. Specialists began to craft auto manufacturer's images solely to please their customers.
Peterloo Massacre
Politics & History

Identity Politics and Popular Movements

Issues tied to gender have often been part of broad-based popular movements, like the Zetetic movement in early nineteenth-century England.
Springfield, Mass. High School
Education

The High School of the Future (in 1917)

In 1917, a Progressive education reformer surveyed the high school landscape and looked to the future. His grand plans still haven’t come to fruition.
Rosalie Slaughter Morton and Anne Morgan, an American philanthropist, in 1918
Health

The Forgotten Women Physicians of World War I

For women physicians, WWI was an opportunity for service that highlighted their deeply ambiguous position, as Ellen More explained in a 1989 paper.
President Ronald Reagan at his desk in the Oval Office.
Business & Economics

Why Ronald Reagan Became the Great Deregulator

How did deregulation, and related ideas about how to run the economy, become so central to American politics? Look to Reagan for the answer.
charter school hallway
Education

When School Choice Works

Betsy DeVos strongly supports charter schools operating within the public school framework, and vouchers that help students pay private school tuition.
WPA mural
Business & Economics

Why Do We Take Pride in Working for a Paycheck?

In the modern imagination, work is a source of pride, but early labor unions regarded hourly toil in industry as "wage slavery."
Vagrant
Business & Economics

The Hidden Subtext of Vagrancy

In recent years, activists in cities across the country have repeatedly clashed with municipal officials over anti-vagrancy laws.
The demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe houses in St. Louis, 1972
Education & Society

“Inner City” Myths and Realities

The history behind why urban black neighborhoods face much higher rates of poverty, crime, and overburdened schools than white suburban areas do.
NYSE floor traders
Business

Why Do Financial Traders Get Those Huge Bonuses?

Highly placed traders win their big money by essentially taking their firms hostage.
Themis statue
Business

When Do We Care About Ethics Violations?

Experimental evidence suggests that our opinions on ethics depend on who’s committing the violations, and who’s doing the judging.
Columbia graduate student union
Education

Why Grad Students Unionize

The graduate student union movement is a fight by low-paid workers to get more money and better benefits.
Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition logo
Politics & History

Cosmopolitanism (and Racism) at the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition

Seattle’s Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition celebrated intercultural connections, but also reduced non-white cultures to quaint attractions.
kindergarteners
Education

The Dangerous Lessons Kindergarteners Learn About Being “Smart”

Kids develop images of themselves as "smart" or "not smart" at very young ages.
meeting
Business

14 Ways to Make Meetings Less Awful

Can anything be done to make meetings more useful and less dull?
Letter on Corpulence William Banting
Health

When Dieting Was Only For Men

Today, we tend to assume dieting is for women, but in the 1860s, it was a masculine pursuit.

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