What do you think?
Rate this book
Capitalism Takes Command: The Social Transformation of Nineteenth-Century America
Most scholarship on nineteenth-century America’s transformation into a market society has focused on consumption, romanticized visions of workers, and analysis of firms and factories. Building on but moving past these studies, Capitalism Takes Command presents a history of family farming, general incorporation laws, mortgage payments, inheritance practices, office systems, and risk management—an inventory of the means by which capitalism became America’s new revolutionary tradition.
This multidisciplinary collection of essays argues not only that capitalism reached far beyond the purview of the economy, but also that the revolution was not confined to the destruction of an agrarian past. As business ceaselessly revised its own practices, a new demographic of private bankers, insurance brokers, investors in securities, and start-up manufacturers, among many others, assumed center stage, displacing older elites and forms of property. Explaining how capital became an “ism” and how business became a political philosophy, Capitalism Takes Command brings the economy back into American social and cultural history.
This multidisciplinary collection of essays argues not only that capitalism reached far beyond the purview of the economy, but also that the revolution was not confined to the destruction of an agrarian past. As business ceaselessly revised its own practices, a new demographic of private bankers, insurance brokers, investors in securities, and start-up manufacturers, among many others, assumed center stage, displacing older elites and forms of property. Explaining how capital became an “ism” and how business became a political philosophy, Capitalism Takes Command brings the economy back into American social and cultural history.
368 pages, Paperback
First published December 21, 2011
4 people are currently reading
53 people want to read
About the author
Michael Zakim
5 books2 followersA specialist in the material and cultural history of modernity in America, Michael Zakim teaches at Tel Aviv University.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 7, 2017
Introduced to Kornblith's social history from A Century of American Historiography by Banner.
December 7, 2016
This is a collection of essays by nine historians who study the early years of capitalism in the United States. Some get a little heavy at times, but most are very readable, and provide a background to our economy that most of us are not aware of. Think the toxic debt for the 2008 crash was new? The essay by Edward E. Baptist outlines an all too similar situation that led to the Panic of 1837. Why don't we learn from history? There is much to learn in these essays.
April 1, 2014
So good.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews