Superwealth: A Historical Perspective
Few business subjects fascinate people as much as the very wealthy. Our obsession with celebrity goes back centuries but seems to have accelerated in recent decades. Forbes produced its first list of the richest Americans in 1982 and later started publishing it...
Success Lost & Found: Sherwin-Williams
While most big companies disappear over time (as shown in our recent newsletter), some figure out how to survive and prosper decade after decade, even century after century. But is the journey from founding to long-term durability a straight path? Today...
Big Rich, Big News, & A Short Book
Big Rich Forbes magazine just released their annual list of the richest people in the world, topped by Jeff Bezos at $177 billion and Elon Musk at $151 billion. Computer scientist and founder of the incubator Y Combinator Paul Graham has written an excellent...
Bye Bye, New York
One of the most significant shifts in American business over the last several decades has been the shrinking number of big corporations headquartered in New York City. At first, some moved “upstate” to the New York suburbs and to Connecticut. But more...
What Became of That Railroad?
On March 21, 2021, the Canadian Pacific Railroad announced that it was buying the Kansas City Southern Railroad for $25 billion. To understand the strategic and geographic implications of this very important business deal, we must first go back in time. ...
Giant Companies Rarely Survive
A careful study of this week’s list will show you the huge American industries which once dominated stock markets, employment, and community life, but which are not as important in the age of Amazon and Google. Our readers know we love lists. There are few other...
Retailing Trends 1992 through 2020
The $6.3 trillion US retailing industry has evolved continuously since the end of the Civil War, when the first chain grocery stores and first department stores began to develop. This chart, based on data from the US Census, shows how the different types of...
Business History Podcast and Video
Friends of Business History, I have been doing a lot of podcasts and interviews recently. I always make plenty of historical references. But when they are primarily about the present and future, I put them up on my other website, https://hooversworld.com/ and...
Student Essay Contest $3,000 First Prize
The American Business History Center is proud to introduce our first annual Business History Essay Contest for High School Students. This is a chance for students to learn about businesses and how they are built, that they are human ventures and have human stories and...Support Us
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