Local Economics

Almost everyone has faced the frustrating task of negotiating with a local, state, national, or foreign government at some point in their lives. Whether they are applying for a building permit from their local zoning board, trying to sell software to the U.S. Defense Department, looking for...

Ghosting the News tells the most troubling media story of our time: How democracy suffers when local news dies. Reporting on news-impoverished areas in the U.S. and around the world, America's premier media critic, Margaret Sullivan, charts the contours of the damage but also surveys some new...

In 2005, Margaret Jones Bolsterli learned that her great-great-grandfather was a free mulatto named Jordan Chavis, who owned an antebellum plantation near Vicksburg, Mississippi. The news was a shock; Bolsterli had heard about the plantation in family stories told during her Arkansas Delta childhood, but Chavis' name and race had never been mentioned. With further exploration, Bolsterli found that when Chavis' children crossed the Mississippi River between 1859 and 1875 for exile in Arkansas, they passed into the white world, leaving the family’s racial history completely behind.

For some of the world's most powerful people, the Empire State Building is the ultimate prize. In a riveting chronicle of betrayal, revenge, family rivalry, and raw greed, Wall Street Journal columnist Pacelle tells the compelling tale of the Empire State Building ownership battle of the 1980s and '90s, bringing to life a colorful cast of characters that includes Donald Trump, Leona Helmsley, and the eccentric Japanese billionaire Hideki Yokoi.