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Discover how the threads of myth, legend, and artistry have been woven together by storytellers to craft history.

History is not the story of great people directing the course of the world. It’s about networks. Sure, great people may have had an outsized pull on certain events. But […]

Even a year like 2020 couldn’t prepare Americans for the first few weeks of 2021. The year’s opening act was a siege on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of […]

Cryptocurrencies are digital currencies that use online ledgers, called blockchains, to record transactions. These blockchains are decentralized, meaning the permanent record is not stored in one location but exists on […]

Predicting how emerging technologies will impact industry is more difficult than it seems—and it seems plenty difficult.  The reason is that we envision the future based on the present. We […]

The encyclopedia offers more "reliable" information than Wikipedia, said Russian President Vladimir Putin.

History may not repeat but it does rhyme.

Facebook might be the biggest social network but it's far from the first, despite what those in Silicon Valley will have you believe.

Countries with top-down power hierarchies get things done quickly—but they just can't last.

A bracing splash of cold Laphroaig in the face of some of our biggest misconceptions, from historian Niall Ferguson.   

Most of history was multi-currency, with distinct currencies linked to cities, not countries. This now tends to be forgotten.

There’s no escaping its vast power and utility for the human enterprise. Stories, great tales, and songs have all been written about the all-mighty dollar. Here's 10 documentaries that we think you'll enjoy.

"At times, it seems as if we are condemned to try to understand our own time with conceptual frameworks more than half a century old." Historian Niall Ferguson says it's time for an update. 

The state wants to increase competition, soften workers' rights, and — sacré bleu — take fewer Sundays off work.

Gross abundance of money and power, or the extreme lack of both, lie at the root of many mental disorders, according to a group of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. 

Niall Ferguson: I’m constantly struck by the levels of historical ignorance that I encounter.  In rooms full of very well-paid financial professionals, nobody appears to have read any of the major works of financial history of the last 30 or 40 years.

Niall Ferguson: going on a world tour and seeing which systems do the best job seems like a pretty good starting place to me. 

Preeminent Harvard historian Niall Ferguson argues that social mobility is extremely important to any developing or advancing society, and that the degree of social mobility is more important than the […]

Big Idea: Economic and Institutional Flexibility

A number of indices suggest that America's political institutions are falling in stature (shocker, right?) and that the nation's ability to support entrepreneurs is suffering as a result.

Historian Niall Ferguson responds to a recent study suggesting that the US is on the verge of a manufacturing renaissance. He believes that major legal and economic reforms would have to take place first. 

It’s not just the Mediterranean tier of countries – Tunisia, Libya, Egypt – that are experiencing stirrings of new life across Africa. Throughout the African continent, formerly moribund nations like […]

Benetton’s controversial new “Unhate” ad campaign, which features pictures of world leaders like Barack Obama and China’s Hu Jintao caught in a liplock, actually raises a thought-provoking question: Is it […]

They live in a parallel society, a world apart, where they obey an alien law and pray to an alien God. Their liberal allies foolishly promote toleration and claim these […]

Niall Ferguson’s The Ascent of Money is a first-rate historical study of the growth of the modern financial system — and a look ahead at what might happen now that […]

Yesterday on the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal (sub req), Harvard Business School professor Niall Ferguson, author of bestselling books like Colossus and Empire, coined a new word […]

Protestors and opposition leaders in Bahrain are calling on the Sunni king to dissolve the government. Will these protests successfully usher in a revolution or be stifled like in Iran?

In Greek mythology, the gods sometimes punished man by fulfilling his wishes too completely. This is the first line of Henry Kissinger’s 1957 Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy. Always controversial, […]

This morning on Morning JoeNiall Ferguson compared General McChrystal to Joseph Conrad’s Kurtz from Heart of Darkness, a character uniquely immortalized by Marlon Brando in Francis Ford Coppola’s film (inspired […]

China’s currency, the renminbi, closed Friday at its strongest level against the US dollar since China revamped its currency policies in 2005, The New York Times reported. This development comes […]