Al Churella will return to Hagley for a talk based on the final volume of his landmark series. The Pennsylvania Railroad: Volume 3, The Long Decline, 1933-1968 concludes the story of this iconic transportation company, covering its long decline from the 1930s to its merger with the New York Central Railroad in 1968 to create the Penn Central. For his talk at Hagley, Churella will look closely at the end of his saga, the biggest merger in the history of American business that united the nation's two most famous railroads—the Pennsylvania and the New York Central. That union, a decade in the making, soon gave rise to the largest bankruptcy in the United States. More than the story of two failing railroads, the creation of Penn Central reflected the ills that plagued the railroad industry and the efforts of strong-willed individuals in business and government to reshape national economic priorities.

This chapter is the fifth in Patton's book manuscript, a more-than-human-history of beer production in the United States and explores the post-World War II consolidation of the American brewing industry by looking at the role of water in the brewing process and the construction of chain breweries throughout the United States.

This chapter investigates the ground-level operations of American “country” banks—the smallest unit banks—between the 1870s and 1920s. Compared to larger banks, most country banks were poorly capitalized and poorly managed. Their survival largely rested on correspondent relations with city banks.

In 1952-1957, the People’s Republic of China’s China National Railways operated based on a marriage of convenience between the pre-revolutionary railway technical intelligentsia and the Communist Party of China (CCP). The railway technical intelligentsia governed the new state-owned railways, working as managers and engineers.