TY  - BOOK
AU  - Levy,Jonathan
TI  - Freaks of fortune: the emerging world of capitalism and risk in America 
SN  - 9780674736351 (pbk.)
AV  - HC 105 L668f 2012
U1  - 330.12/2097309034 
PY  - 2012///
CY  - Cambridge, Mass.
PB  - Harvard University Press
KW  - Capitalism
KW  - United States
KW  - History
KW  - 19th century
KW  - Capitalismo
KW  - Historia
KW  - Estados Unidos
KW  - Siglo XIX
KW  - Risk
KW  - Sociological aspects
KW  - Sociología del riesgo
KW  - Risk-taking (Psychology)
KW  - Economic conditions
KW  - Social conditions
KW  - Condiciones económicas
KW  - Condiciones sociales
N1  - Includes bibliographical references and index; The assumption of risk -- The perils of the seas -- The actuarial science of freedom -- The failure of the freedman's bank -- Betting the farm -- Fraternity in the age of capital -- Trading the future -- The trust question
N2  - "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."
ER  -