Dominic Lounds

After discovering the lucrative business of contemporary fine art, Tim sets off on a get-rich-quick scheme to create the most simple, most valuable piece of art he can. But his desire to create may lead him down a dark path as he is consumed by the artistic process, and perhaps something even more sinister.

After discovering the lucrative business of contemporary fine art, Tim sets off on a get-rich-quick scheme to create the most simple, most valuable piece of art he can. But his desire to create may lead him down a dark path as he is consumed by the artistic process, and perhaps something even more sinister.

The Busing Battleground pulls back the curtain on the volatile effort to end school segregation, detailing the decades-long struggle for educational equity that preceded the crisis. It illustrates how civil rights battles had to be fought across the North as well as the South and reckons with the class dimensions of the desegregation saga, exploring how the neighborhoods most impacted by the court’s order were the poorest in the city.

America’s favorite board game, Monopoly, is a love letter to unbridled capitalism and the impulses that make our free-market society tick. Contrary to the folksy legend spread by Parker Brothers, Monopoly’s origin involves a radical feminist and a community of Quakers in Atlantic City. If not for the determination of an economics professor and impassioned anti-monopolist, the real story behind the creation of the game might never have come to light.

Chemical engineer and inventor Maria Telkes worked for nearly 50 years to harness the power of the sun, designing and building the world's first successful solar-heated modern residence and identifying a new chemical that could store solar heat like a battery. Telkes was undercut and thwarted by her (male) boss and colleagues at MIT, but she persevered. Upon her death in 1995 Telkes held more than 20 patents, and now she is recognized as a visionary pioneer in the field of sustainable energy whose work continues to shape how we power our lives today.