business history 
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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SOURCE: Legal History Blog
8/30/2020
Anne Fleming: Business Historians Remember
Anne Fleming is remembered as an outstanding scholar and generous colleague.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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9/8/19
Beyond the Vote, The Suffragists Helped Launch Modern Business Franchising
by Jane R. Plitt
We should also acknowledge the role of the suffrage movement in supporting the launch of modern franchising begun by Martha Matilda Harper in 1891.
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5/26/19
Leadership and Mimicry: What Plutarch knew about Elizabeth Holmes
by Jeffrey Beneker
In business and in politics, philosophers and reporters tell us that no one can hide deficiencies in character forever.
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