Underbelly

I enjoyed Jonathan Levy's Freaks of Fortune --profited from it, too, I think--although I would have a tough time saying just what the b...

Two snippets and a bit of context.  One, Chez Buce indulged (if you call it that) the other n ight in the first part of Ken Burns' Dust...

Ask my college friend David what his father did for a living and he would say "outsmarts the ILGWU."  I mor or less got it: papa ...

My friend Marie (name change) and I were chatting about our youth around (but not in) the millyards, textile and otherwise, of Manchester N...

Another post about bankers, this time the Swiss variety.  Years ago I heard that Swiss banking got its start when Protestant bankers, cross...

Kindleberger (citing Forelich and Oppenheimer) on the Dutch : Holland was the leader among the seven provinces, however, and as in politica...

As they got ready to publish Why Nations Fail , I suspect that Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson saw themselves as shooting at the bi...

Barbara Clark Smith's The Freedom We Lost ranks one millionth (give or take) in the Amazon league tables which must be dispiriting. And...

Reviewing Richard White's new book about the history of the railroads, Michael Kazin longs for an Edenic yesterday before Hayek and Sch...

Cool charts show how recently the United States was a footnote to world economic life ( link ).