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Illustration of workers designed like they are a part of a technological apparatus.

How Stanford Helped Capitalism Take Over the World

The ruthless logic driving our economy can be traced back to 19th-century Palo Alto.
Portrait of Jane Stanford, circa 1855.

A Poisonous Legacy

Two new books reveal the story of Stanford University’s early years to be rife with corruption, autocracy, incompetence, white supremacy, and murder.
Technology and California graphic.

Blame Palo Alto

From Stanford to Silicon Valley, a small town in California spread tech’s gospel of data and control.
A Silicon Valley office building.

Better, Faster, Stronger

Two recent books illuminate the dark foundations of Silicon Valley.
Malcolm Harris, left, and the cover of his book "Palo Alto," right. (Photo by Julia Burke)

The Obscene Invention of California Capitalism

A new history examines Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, the West Coast's settler ideology, and recent turbulence in the world of tech.
Leland and Jane Stanford

Stop All the Cocks! Who Killed Jane Stanford?

Many of the ­private colleges and universities in the US arose as much out of vanity as necessity. But for morbid narcissism, nothing comes close to Stanford.
Photo of an elderly Jane Stanford, dressed in lace and beads.

The Robber Baroness of Northern California

Authorities who investigated Jane Stanford’s mysterious death said the wealthy widow had no enemies. A new book finds that she had many.
Sign for the Silicon Valley Financial Center.

The Hidden History of How the Government Kick-Started Silicon Valley

It’s time to move past the tech sector’s creator myths.
Illustration of an octopus with a "no talking" symbol, with its tentacles around the globe.

How Cancel Culture Panics Ate the World

A set of peculiarly American anxieties has spread across continents.
Abstract art piece showing various different people speaking.

The Campus Controversy Complex

Campus speech debates reveal a history of distorted narratives, balancing free speech, moral standards, and generational conflicts in U.S. universities.
A computer-drawn image of George Moses Horton.

Stand Up and Spout

Cecil Brown wants to digitally revive the enslaved antebellum poet George Moses Horton. Can digital technology help reconnect us to the tradition he embodied?
"IX" surrounded by female athletes

The Pursuit of Equal Play: Reflecting on 50 Years of Title IX

How a 37-word clause tucked inside a new education legislation reshape women’s sports forever.
Book cover of Whole Earth, featuring an image of Stewart Brand backlit and walking through a door, encircled by the earth.

On Floating Upstream

Markoff’s biography of Stewart Brand notes that Brand’s ability to recognize and cleave to power explains a great deal of his career.
People gathered around an electronic contraption with lightbulbs.

Ideas of the PMC

A review of three new books that in various ways track the rise of the "Professional Managerial Class."
A man shovels out the parking lot of an old factory buildingcovered in graffiti.
partner

How a 50-Year-Old Study Was Misconstrued to Create Destructive Broken-Windows Policing

The harmful policy was built on a shaky foundation.
Leland Stanford, oil painting by French artist Ernest Meissonier, 1881. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Was Leland Stanford a ‘Magnanimous’ Philanthropist or a ‘Thief, Liar, and Bigot?’

The railroad baron and governor of California was starkly contradictory and infamously disruptive.

How Silicon Valley Broke the Economy

The question of how to fix the tech industry is now inseparable from the question of how to fix late 20th century capitalism.

The Failed Political Promise of Silicon Valley

Tech was meant to help us transcend our most intractable problems. What went wrong?

How Charitable Donations Remade Our Courts

The Olin Foundation funded the Federalist Society, seminars for judges, and much more.

The Book That Incited a Worldwide Fear of Overpopulation

'The Population Bomb' made dire predictions—and triggered a wave of repression around the world.

From Public Good to Personal Pursuit: Historical Roots of the Student Debt Crisis

The roots of the student debt crisis are neither economic nor financial in origin, but rather social.

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