Professor Mills teaches in the Department of History at the University of Michigan, where he is a distinguished scholar of Latin America. Mills is also an accomplished creative writer and photographer. You can find his work at Dispatches, kennethmills@substack.com. 

Professor Mills kindly shared a photograph of Astor Place subway station in Manhattan, New York. The Astor family once lived in this area, along with some of the wealthiest American families such as the Vanderbilts. For a time, John Jacob Astor owned large sections of New York City. Indeed, in many respects Astor played a central role in the creation of the city as the country’s financial hub and a city renowned for its inequality. Here in the photograph one can see a representation of the beaver that helped make Astor at the time America’s richest man.