Marc Levinson

Marc Levinson discusses his new book An Extraordinary Time: The End of the Postwar Boom and the Return of the Ordinary Economy.

Large cargo ships are sitting idle today along the West Coast. No one is unloading them because of a labor dispute. These ports account for 43 percent of container traffic in the U.S.

Container shipping began 50 years ago and developed into a huge industry that has made the boom in global trade possible. Marc Levinson, author of The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger, tells us how cargo moves around the works, and looks at the sweeping economic consequences containerization brought about.

Marc Levinson tells the history of A&P, from its beginning as a tea shop in New York to the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, the largest retailer in the world. Mom-and-pop grocery stores enlisted state and federal governments to stop price discounting, tax chain stores, and require manufacturers to sell to small businesses at the same prices granted to giant retailers. The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America is the story of  the company and how it changed how Americans shop and the foods we eat.

After the bottom nearly dropped out of the international climate summit in Copenhagen six months ago, some say don’t expect much, if anything, to come out of a similar summit beginning today in Bonn, Germany. The main challenges on coming to an agreement remain, and one of the big questions is: How should rich economies help poor countries deal with climate change?

Four hundred tons of flowers sat rotting in the cold room of an airport in Kenya over the weekend, waiting to be shipped to Europe. These flowers are among the first collateral damage of the Icelandic ash cloud which has turned most of Europe's airspace into a no-fly zone and delayed travel for some 6.8 million people.