Thurgood Marshall
In a speech marking the bicentennial of the US Constitution, Marshall argued that its framers intentionally inscribed slavery into the American economy.
The Shrewd Business Logic of Immigrant Cooks
Savvy observers, immigrant restaurateurs operate as amateur anthropologists who analyze their potential customers to determine how to best attract them.
“The Crocodile,” Dostoevsky’s Weirdest Short Story
Why being eaten by a crocodile named Little Karl is really a lesson in the dangers of foreign capital.
Economics in Ancient Greece
The modern term “economics” comes from the Greek word “oikonomia,” but the ancient Greeks had a very different way of thinking about material life.
Policing the Holocaust in Paris
Unlike in the rest of Nazi-occupied Europe, the arrest of Jewish people was largely in the hands of ordinary policemen in France, especially in Paris.
Writing Online Fiction in China
Many amateur “fan fiction” writers on the Chinese internet use real history as a canvas for time-travel stories that often break the fourth wall.
Hi, Jai Alai
Once popular across the United States, jai alai lives on in American sport culture mostly thanks to its history as a legal option for gambling.
Biking While Black in DC
Because of its political structure, Washington became a test case in federally mandated laws that enabled racially discriminatory policing of public space.
When French Citrus Colonized Algeria
The citrus industry in Algeria honed French imperial apparatuses and provided a means for France to define and shape the behavior of its colonial subjects.