A Fistful of Data: Information and the Cattle Industry
Beef barons needed cowboys less and bookkeepers more as the nineteenth century wore on.
What’s Behind the Pandemic Puzzle Craze?
Puzzles, or “dissected maps,” were invented in Georgian-era England, probably by a mapmaker named John Spilsbury in the early 1760s.
Preparing Libraries for Nuclear War
During the Cold War, America's libraries helped patrons prepare for nuclear war, from stocking reference materials to providing fallout shelters.
Eat the Rich: What Amazon and Whole Foods Tell Us about Internet-Era Eating
The internet has already transformed how Americans eat; the Amazon/Whole Foods deal is just the culmination of this transformation.