History columnist Curt Eriksmoen delivers the second story on William "Thornton" Montgomery, a former slave who moved to North Dakota and became a bonanza farmer.
Before his disastrous invasion of Russia, Napoleon Bonaparte said, “Geography is destiny!” And even today, this assertion prompts useful thinking about how geography influences development of economies over time and why apparently similar countries can have quite different outcomes. Such effects can be very broad, as on settlement or cropping patterns, but also on very […]