Washington Archives - Public Seminar

Literature

The Garden of Wrath

An excerpt from The Oyster Diaries

March 31, 2026 • by Nancy Lemann

Maybe all families are alike on annual beach vacations. Tense. We used to go on an annual vacation with the in-laws to the Southern coast in August. Our destination was an island off the coast of South Carolina. I-95 was horrendous driving down from Washington on a Friday after work, the ...

The National, Bipartisan Loathing of Hospital Monopolies

State legislators of all political leanings are fed up

February 16, 2023 • by Pat Garofalo

The United States, rather famously, has the highest health care prices in the developed world. And one of the chief drivers behind that is high hospital prices: hospitals receive $1 in $3 spent in the United States on health care, and they're more profitable than other notorious health care sectors such as insurers or ...

The Future of DC’s Antitrust Fight With Amazon

State attorneys general can challenge the damaging practices of the largest corporations in America

May 27, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

Last year, Karl Racine, the attorney general for Washington, D.C., sued Amazon under the District’s antitrust laws. And his case was a novel one. While Amazon in the American zeitgeist is associated with low prices, Racine alleged that Amazon was actually using restrictive and unfair agreements with its third-party sellers ...