Jonathan Agin is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn.
Before socialism even had a name, the poet and painter William Blake saw how the Industrial Revolution’s "dark Satanic mills" harmed humanity. His visionary work condemned the forces of commodification and cold calculation in emergent capitalism.
Year after year, funds actively managed by professional analysts fail to outperform passive index funds. So how are professional stock pickers still a thing? And how long before their clock runs out?
Today the Chabad-Lubavitch movement champions far-right religious zealotry under a messianic banner. But a century ago, left-wing Jewish thinkers like Walter Benjamin and Franz Kafka understood messianic prophecy as foretelling universal liberation.
New York’s Catskill Mountains were once home to many famous Jewish vacation resorts. But lesser known were their bargain counterparts: the communal bungalow colonies that made summer leisure accessible to the urban Jewish working class.