Freaks of fortune : the emerging world of capitalism and risk in America / Jonathan Levy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Levy, Jonathan, 1978- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Capitalism--United States--History--19th century.

Capitalism.

Risk--Sociological aspects--History--19th century.

Risk.

Risk-taking (Psychology)--United States--History--19th century.

Risk-taking (Psychology).

United States--Economic conditions--19th century.

United States.

United States--Social conditions--19th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (414 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Emerging world of capitalism and risk in America

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2012.

Summary:

Until the early nineteenth century, "risk" was a specialized term: it was the commodity exchanged in a marine insurance contract. Freaks of Fortune tells the story of how the modern concept of risk emerged in the United States. Born on the high seas, risk migrated inland and became essential to the financial management of an inherently uncertain capitalist future. Focusing on the hopes and anxieties of ordinary people, Jonathan Levy shows how risk developed through the extraordinary growth of new financial institutions-insurance corporations, savings banks, mortgage-backed securities markets, commodities futures markets, and securities markets-while posing inescapable moral questions. For at the heart of risk's rise was a new vision of freedom. To be a free individual, whether an emancipated slave, a plains farmer, or a Wall Street financier, was to take, assume, and manage one's own personal risk. Yet this often meant offloading that same risk onto a series of new financial institutions, which together have only recently acquired the name "financial services industry." Levy traces the fate of a new vision of personal freedom, as it unfolded in the new economic reality created by the American financial system. Amid the nineteenth-century's waning faith in God's providence, Americans increasingly confronted unanticipated challenges to their independence and security in the boom and bust chance-world of capitalism. Freaks of Fortune is one of the first books to excavate the historical origins of our own financialized times and risk-defined lives.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Prologue: Voyage

Chapter 1. The Assumption of Risk

Chapter 2. The Perils of the Seas

Chapter 3. The Actuarial Science of Freedom

Chapter 4. The Failure of the Freedman's Bank

Chapter 5. Betting the Farm

Chapter 6. Fraternity in the Age of Capital

Chapter 7. Trading the Future

Chapter 8. The Trust Question

Epilogue: Freaks of Fortune

Appendix: Tables

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Originally published 2012; First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 2014.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780674067202

OCLC:

815281403