Articles 2026
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‘The UPS Man’: All in the Delivery
The Wall Street Journal, October 24, 2026
Review of The UPS Man: James E. Casey and the Creation of Modern Logistics by Marc Levinson
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Virtual Worlds
Works in Progress, September 08, 2026
10 Mins The massively multiplayer online game was created in the 1980s.
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How Amsterdam invented the fire department
Works in Progresss, July 01, 2026
Two Dutch brothers invented a system that transformed a city previously ravaged by fires,
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American Ambitions
Liberty Fund, July 2026
Rather than jockeying for a fixed number of slots in a preordained order, ambitious Americans embraced the Declaration’s promises of equality and liberty to shape new outlets for their aspirations. The combination of economic circumstances and liberal institutions created a distinctly American version of ambition.
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Engineering the Disposable Diaper
Works in Progress, April 24, 2026
Benjamin Spock told mothers in the mid-twentieth century to buy six dozen cloth diapers and a covered pail. Within a decade, both were obsolete.
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How TV learned to sell itself
Sports solved a problem that nearly killed television.
Works in Progress, March 11, 2026
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The Renaissance book that heralded growth
9 Mins Long before modern science, Europeans learned to see their own time as an age of invention rather than decline.
Works in Progress, December 23, 2025
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Lawn-Sign Liberalism vs. Supply-Side Progressivism
Review of Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
Reason, March 18, 2025
"Supply-side progressives" like Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson are ultimately technocrats, not libertarians. But they recognize that more is better than less and that a good society is not zero-sum.
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The World of Tomorrow
Works in Progress, December 2024
When the future arrived, it felt… ordinary. What happened to the glamour of tomorrow?
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We Still Live in the Physical World
Review of The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World, by Christine Rosen
Reason, September 10, 2024
The digital world has not effaced our humanity, no matter what social critics like Christine Rosen say.