Howard Bodenhorn's State Banking in Early America studies the financial experimentation that took place in the United States between 1790 and 1860. Dr. Bodenhorn's book explores regional differences in banking structures, which bear indirectly in the conection between financial and economic development. If a single theme emerges, it is that the United States benefitted from its free banking philosophy in which state governments, rather than a centralized authority, created financial structures designed to serve specific, local needs. Thus decentralized federalism provided state...

This history focuses on the credit generating function of American banks. It demonstrates that banks aggressively promoted economic development rather than passively following its course. Using previously unexploited data, Professor Bodenhorn shows that banks helped to advance the development of industrialization. Additionally, he shows that banks formed long-distance relationships that promoted geographic capital mobility, thereby assuring that short-term capital was directed in socially desirable directions. He then traces those institutional and legal developments that allowed for this...

Despite the many advances that the United States has made in racial equality over the past half century, numerous events within the past several years have proven prejudice to be alive and well in modern-day America. In one such example, Governor Nikki Haley of South Carolina dismissed one of her principal advisors in 2013 when his membership in the ultra-conservative Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) came to light. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, in 2001 the CCC website included a message that read "God is the one who divided mankind into different races.... Mixing the...