How Deprivation and the Threat of Violence Made Sweden Equal

War and the Great Depression Spurred Its Embrace of the Welfare State

Sweden is almost universally regarded as a bastion of sensible people, temperate social policies, and steady, evenly distributed economic growth. So it surprises many to learn that the Scandinavian country only got to be this way in the last century, and that the catalyst was violent upheaval: two world wars and the Great Depression.

Economic inequality has always been with us, and when you observe a dramatic market compression you can always link it to a disastrous event. These events come in four flavors: intense popular military mobilization, violent and …

1936, When “The Dictator” FDR Was Bent on Constitutional Destruction

The Fight Over the New Deal and Roosevelt's Second Term Launched a New Style of American Political Attack

True or False? Franklin Delano Roosevelt claimed to be a conservative defender of the nation’s founding ideals.

If you answered “both,” you’d be correct. We don’t tend to think of …

Herbert Hoover’s Hidden Economic Acumen

What an Awful President's Secret Strength Could Teach Today's Financial Leaders About Capitalism

From our nation’s inception, Americans have been a forward-looking people— youthful, optimistic, even revolutionary. Progress has been our byword, and the past has often been dismissed as stodgy, if not …

The Dichotomy of ‘The Duke’

Onscreen, John Wayne Embodied the American Man at His Best and Worst

First, the backstory, which happens to be true.

In 1972, I was 21 years old, living in my native Ohio, and had come to the conclusion that if I wanted to …

When Hoover Tear-Gassed My Dad

Hollywood Sent Its Own Bonus Marchers To Washington. The Welcome Wasn't Warm.

Hollywood 1932. What a town. Fantasyland. Eternal summer.

Great Depression? Not here, at least not as reported by the local press. Hollywood was where Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Douglas …