The Great A&P

Anyone over a certain age automatically feels nostalgia at the sight of the fabled logo for A&P supermarkets. But behind the patina of yesteryear simplicity is a complex story of the one-time largest retailer in the world, forerunner of all the big-box enterprises that dominate commerce today. Marc Levinson tells the saga of A&P's birth, rise, dominance, and decline under the assault of many small legal woes.

May 20: Blue jeans celebrate their unofficial 140th birthday today, the dry goods merchant Levi Strauss and the tailor Jacob Davis receiving a patent on May 20, 1873 for "a new article of manufacture, a pair of pantaloons having the…

Ethan Rutherford and Matt Burgess (Dogfight: A Love Story) on the writing of Rutherford's surreal and fiercely funny story collection The Peripatetic Coffin

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