They wanted to sell as much as possible at as high a price as possible. But if all the producers in a marketplace try to grow and harvest as much as possible, they will oversupply the market, tank the price, and kill their profits. If a group of producers agree to restrain output in order to maintain a profitable level of scarcity, on the other

People aren’t puppets, and to pull a person is to create the conditions for rebellion.

Historian Albert L. Hurtado describes the impact of Sutter on the region, in particular the bell he used to summon Indians to work: Sutter’s bell heralded the arrival of a modern sense of time in the Sacramento Valley… Now, for at least part of their lives, some Indians were wedded to a concept that proclaimed that time was limited and that it had

After all, the only way for Stanford to have height records for its incoming freshmen was to ask on the application, which the school did into the 1980s.

What haunts are the kinds of large historical crimes that, once committed, can never truly be set right.

Capital hit California like a meteor, alien tendrils surging from the crash site.

mutualistic relationship of belonging between humans and the rest of the ecology.

In their report, Intelligence Tests and School Reorganization, Terman called for breaking classes into five tracks (gifted, bright, average, slow, and special—echoing the A–E soldier ranking) based on ability, so that America might get the most out of its children.

The genius study was a story, and many powerful people worked hard to make it come true.