World War II threatened to ruin Major League Baseball. By 1945, over 500 major leaguers and 3,000 minor league prospects had been enlisted for the war effort, leaving a dearth of talent for the Big Leagues. The St. Louis Browns, like other AL and NL clubs, would be forced to fill holes in their roster with scrubs-4-F players (those dismissed from the military due to physical ailments), retired major leaguers, and youngsters not yet ready to leave the minors. But there were still some top l...

Andres Duarte was a Mexican army veteran who was awarded a 6,595-acre grant south of the San Gabriel Mountains in 1841. Parceled out to settlers and farmers, the Rancho Azusa de Duarte began thriving when rail lines were built to access the citrus crops. Duarte was home to the City of Hope, a tuberculosis clinic that became a world-class cancer research and treatment center. The old U.S. Route 66 brought thousands of new Californians through the residential melting pot from points east. Re...

One might not expect to find much in the middle of California's hot, dry deserts. But to the curious explorer, they're scattered with strange and extraordinary sights. On old Route 66, the desert traveler can find quirky roadside art and mementos left by motorists. In the El Paso Mountains of the Mojave, the daring adventurer can crawl through a tunnel that was hand dug by an old prospector named Burro Schmidt. In Landers, the weary wanderer can enjoy a rejuvenating "sound bath" in an acou...

A celebration of America's most historic highway, in words and pictures.Winding through the rugged heartland of the American West, Route 66 has resonated for generations in hardscrabble tales of hopeful seekers of new homes and new lives. It also inspired Alan and Claudia Heller, longtime residents of Duarte, a California town along Route 66, to hitch their trailer to a retirement dream and travel the road again, journeying through their home state and back to Chic...

When Alan Maimon got the assignment in 2000 to report on life in rural Eastern Kentucky, his editor at the Louisville Courier-Journal told him to cover the region "like a foreign correspondent would."And indeed, when Maimon arrived in Hazard, Kentucky, fresh off a reporting stint for the New York Times's Berlin bureau, he felt every bit the outsider. He had landed in a place in the vice grip of ecological devastation and a corporate-made opioid epidemic—a place wh...

In The Politics of Petulance Alan Wolfe argues the core of our problem isn't Trump himself—it's that we are mired in an age of political immaturity. That immaturity is not grounded in any one ideology, nor is it a function of age or education. In 2016, many Americans were offered tantalizingly simple answers to complicated problems, and, like children being offered a lunch of Pop Rocks and Coke, they reflexively—and mindlessly—accepted.The good news is that we've been here...

Many studies on International tax compaisons have been undertaken since the early 1970s. While controversial, such studies have facilitated more subtle comparisons of a country's tax performance than would be afforded by focusing on its simple tax ratio.

How many people are employed by the government? How many are employed by the central government compared with the state and local authorities? How many are employed in public enterprise? How much are they all paid? How much are they paid relative to each other, or relative to the private sector? Such questions interest people in general and economists and policymakers in particular; yet it is remarkable how little information is readily accessible on thes topics.

Three decades ago, conservative ideologues at The Heritage Foundation produced a primer on the Reagan Revolution entitled Mandate for Leadership, which offered an overarching philosophy against the role of government and in favor of markets. This volume, produced by the Institute for Policy Studies, which since 1963 has been the nation's leading progressive policy organization, offers a set of specific policy proposals for the incoming national administration on every major domest...

Stratis Morfogen has been one of the most innovative names in New York City's hospitality scene for decades. From bringing the famed Fulton Fish Market online in 1997 to pioneering the automat movement with Brooklyn Dumpling Shop to opening a 25,000 square foot venue in Times Square during the pandemic, Morfogen continues to disrupt the status quo.In Be a Disruptor, Morfogen provides an unconventional, real-world education for any entrepreneur by sharing how he beat the od...

"In a time when truth is under assault, Hector Macdonald is here to defend it. He offers clear-eyed, compelling guidelines for becoming a more accurate consumer and producer of information."-Adam Grant, author of Give and Take, Originals, and Option B with Sheryl SandbergFor fans of Nudge, Sway, and The Art of Thinking Clearly, a fascinating dive into the many ways in which "competing truths" shape our opinions, behaviors, and beliefs.

A deeply relevant look at what fascism means to Americans.From the time Mussolini took power in Italy in 1922, Americans have been obsessed with and brooded over the meaning of fascism and how it might migrate to the United States. Fascism Comes to America examines how we have viewed fascism overseas and its implications for our own country. Bruce Kuklick explores the rhetoric of politicians, who have used the language of fascism to smear opponents, and he...