business history

• 
• 9/11/2022
  

  Pessimistic Economic Forecasts Ignore a History of Dynamism

  by John Landry and Howard Wolk

  Many economic histories portray the American prosperity of the century between the Civil War and the 1970s as the picking of low-hanging fruit. But the story of entrepreneurial innovation during that time is more complicated, and more relevant to the present, than we think. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  7/25/2022
  

  Companies Worried about Worker Turnover? Benefits and Baseball Worked at the Turn of the 20th Century

  by Jeffrey Smith

  A generation of industrialists adopted a slate of extracurricular benefits like baseball teams as part of a welfare capitalist movement to improve production and thwart unionization. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Baffler
  2/17/2022
  

  The Revolt of the Super Employees

  by Erik Baker

  The business managerial ethos established in the 1980s destroyed the idea of solidarity and replaced it with a fantasy version of meritocracy. Now, upper-middle management is having the rug pulled out from under it, and they're mad. Are they mad enough to recognize the faults of the system? 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  11/9/2021
  

  The Great White(washing) Way: Business History on Broadway Without Slavery

  by Imani Perry

  The new show "The Lehman Trilogy" tells a heroic story of German Jewish immigrant brothers who rose to the top of American finance, but it tells it without reference to the labor of enslaved people that made it possible. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  8/9/2021
  

  The Connection Between Conservative Christianity and Fast Food Franchises

  by Marcia Chatelain

  Many fast food chains have roots in two pillars of 20th-century conservatism: Christianity and free markets.

• 
• SOURCE: Christian Science Monitor
  

  Capitalism American-Style: A Financial History of the United States

  “Ages of American Capitalism" by Jonathan Levy sheds light on U.S. history as seen through a financial lens. 

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  6/14/2021
  

  Our Insurance Dystopia

  by Caley Horan

  America's health insurance morass is a result of the replacement of the ideal of mutual, universal risk sharing with the privatization of risk in pursuit of profit. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  4/20/2021
  

  The Men Who Turned Slavery Into Big Business

  by Joshua D. Rothman

  "We still live in the world that Franklin and Armfield’s profits helped build, and with the enduring inequalities that they and their industry entrenched."

• 
• SOURCE: Contingent
  4/17/2021
  

  How To Make An Oligopoly

  by Brittany McWilliams

  A document from the Eli Lilly corporate archives shows how the pharmaceutical giant strategized to control the global market in insulin. 

• 
• SOURCE: History.com
  2/21/2020
  

  The Food that Built America: The Kings of Burgers

  Historians Marcia Chatelain and Mireya Loza are featured in the History Channel's documentary on the rise of fast food in America. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  9/20/2020
  

  Donald Kendall, Who Built Pepsico into a Soda and Snack-Food Giant, Dies at 99

  The late president of Pepsi-Cola was a leader in bringing American products to the Soviet bloc and Communist China during the cold war and was influential in pushing Richard Nixon to support the CIA's coup against democratically-elected socialist Salvador Allende in Chile.

• 
• SOURCE: Legal History Blog
  8/30/2020
  

  Anne Fleming: Business Historians Remember

  Anne Fleming is remembered as an outstanding scholar and generous colleague. 

• 
• 5/3/2020
  

  Robots Don't Catch the Coronavirus

  by Alan Singer

  Companies have used federal funding in previous crises for selfish, rather than public, ends. In the COVID-19 crisis some are using bailout funds to make jobs permanently disappear. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/18/2020
  

  As Amazon Rises, So Does the Opposition

  Ms. Mitchell is 47, a historian by training. But her real role is the strategist of the demise of Amazon as we know it.

• 
• 3/27/2020
  

  "Rogue" Manufacturing in China: Past and Present

  by Eugenia Lean

  As China’s economic power grows, global intellectual property might end up looking more and more like the Chinese tradition of shanzhai in the future.

• 
• SOURCE: Harvard Business Review
  3/16/2020
  

  What Democracy’s History Tells Us About Its Future

  In an email exchange hosted by the Harvard Business Review, Professor of Business Rebecca Henderson and Professor of History Jill Lepore discussed capitalism’s role in an increasingly populist world.

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  2/6/20
  

  The Risky Dream of the Fast Food Franchise

  by Marcia Chatelain

  Americans have long pinned economic hopes on fast-food chains. And where there are hopes, there are scams.

• 
• SOURCE: Tom Dispatch
  11/10/19
  

  The Greatest Scam in History

  by Naomi Oreskes

  Scientists working on the issue have often told me that, once upon a time, they assumed, if they did their jobs, politicians would act upon the information. That, of course, hasn’t happened. Why?

• 
• 11/3/19
  

  Citibank: Exploiting the Past, Condemning the Future

  by Alan Singer

  To celebrate its 200th anniversary in 2011, Citibank published a book celebrating its history. Despite the book's heft, glossy photographs, and celebratory tone, Citibank and its forbearers definitely did not strive to make the world a better place.

• 
• 10/22/19
  

  The Internet At 50: How the Dot-Com Bubble Burst

  by Harlan Lebo

  As a cautionary tale and a business school lesson about irrational investor expectations, no modern example proved better than the dot-com bubble.