If you want a snapshot of the future of 20th century progressivism, look at the nation’s waterways. In the 19th and 20th centuries dams were a hallmark of progressive planning – using the resources and coordination of the government to build an infrastructure that would power industry, generate electricity, and create construction jobs. Now many […]

The recent “great recession” and the slow recovery that followed it have wreaked havoc on nearly all aspects of American life. Families have struggled to provide work, entire cities have witnessed the gutting of their economic life and local governments have been forced to oversee massive cutbacks in basic services.  The Economist reports on a […]

My review of That Used To Be Us, the new book by Tom Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, appears in this morning’s New York Times.  You can read it here.

For those of you who were out having a life this weekend, some highlights from Via Meadia’s weekend posts: If you have always wanted a fancy Italian Renaissance palazzo in Italy, this may be the chance you have been waiting for. The Italian government is selling historic real estate to help pay its debts. From […]

Badly needed wholesale change is coming to American medicine – Via Meadia has long predicted it – and the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein is also on the bandwagon. Between Robo-Doc prostate surgeons and ever-shrinking super computers, technology is changing how and who (or what) does medicine. Klein writes in the WaPo: … Most doctors right […]

Are human rights prosecutions inexorably on the rise? It all depends on how you count them.

Alexander Del Mar's view on the origins of money were revolutionary for the 19^th century. Why have so few people heard of him?

If you expect the worst from people, they'll often oblige.

What So Proudly We Hail is more than just a memorial to a bygone American era; it's a handbook for recovering endangered civic virtues.

Millionaire Wall Streeters, media mavens and corporate titans make for unlikely populists.