Freaks Of Fortune

Download Freaks Of Fortune full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online Freaks Of Fortune ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!

Freaks of Fortune

Author : Jonathan Levy
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674067207
Total Pages : 425 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Freaks of Fortune by : Jonathan Levy

Download or read book Freaks of Fortune written by Jonathan Levy and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-29 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 Fortuneis one of the first books to excavate the historical origins of our own financialized times and risk-defined lives.

Ages of American Capitalism

Author : Jonathan Levy
Publisher : Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN 13 : 0812985184
Total Pages : 945 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (129 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Ages of American Capitalism by : Jonathan Levy

Download or read book Ages of American Capitalism written by Jonathan Levy and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2022-04-05 with total page 945 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading economic historian traces the evolution of American capitalism from the colonial era to the present—and argues that we’ve reached a turning point that will define the era ahead. “A monumental achievement, sure to become a classic.”—Zachary D. Carter, author of The Price of Peace In this ambitious single-volume history of the United States, economic historian Jonathan Levy reveals how capitalism in America has evolved through four distinct ages and how the country’s economic evolution is inseparable from the nature of American life itself. The Age of Commerce spans the colonial era through the outbreak of the Civil War, and the Age of Capital traces the lasting impact of the industrial revolution. The volatility of the Age of Capital ultimately led to the Great Depression, which sparked the Age of Control, during which the government took on a more active role in the economy, and finally, in the Age of Chaos, deregulation and the growth of the finance industry created a booming economy for some but also striking inequalities and a lack of oversight that led directly to the crash of 2008. In Ages of American Capitalism, Levy proves that capitalism in the United States has never been just one thing. Instead, it has morphed through the country’s history—and it’s likely changing again right now. “A stunning accomplishment . . . an indispensable guide to understanding American history—and what’s happening in today’s economy.”—Christian Science Monitor “The best one-volume history of American capitalism.”—Sven Beckert, author of Empire of Cotton

Fortune Tellers

Author : Walter Friedman
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691159114
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Fortune Tellers by : Walter Friedman

Download or read book Fortune Tellers written by Walter Friedman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-12-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping history of the pioneers who sought to use science to predict financial markets The period leading up to the Great Depression witnessed the rise of the economic forecasters, pioneers who sought to use the tools of science to predict the future, with the aim of profiting from their forecasts. This book chronicles the lives and careers of the men who defined this first wave of economic fortune tellers, men such as Roger Babson, Irving Fisher, John Moody, C. J. Bullock, and Warren Persons. They competed to sell their distinctive methods of prediction to investors and businesses, and thrived in the boom years that followed World War I. Yet, almost to a man, they failed to predict the devastating crash of 1929. Walter Friedman paints vivid portraits of entrepreneurs who shared a belief that the rational world of numbers and reason could tame--or at least foresee--the irrational gyrations of the market. Despite their failures, this first generation of economic forecasters helped to make the prediction of economic trends a central economic activity, and shed light on the mechanics of financial markets by providing a range of statistics and information about individual firms. They also raised questions that are still relevant today. What is science and what is merely guesswork in forecasting? What motivates people to buy forecasts? Does the act of forecasting set in motion unforeseen events that can counteract the forecast made? Masterful and compelling, Fortune Tellers highlights the risk and uncertainty that are inherent to capitalism itself.

Capitalism Takes Command

Author : Michael Zakim
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226451097
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (264 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Capitalism Takes Command by : Michael Zakim

Download or read book Capitalism Takes Command written by Michael Zakim and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-02 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Freak Show

Author : Robert Bogdan
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022622743X
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (262 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Freak Show by : Robert Bogdan

Download or read book Freak Show written by Robert Bogdan and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-12-10 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This cultural history of the travelling freak show in America chronicles the rise and fall of the industry as attitudes about disability evolved. From 1840 until 1940, hundreds of freak shows crisscrossed the United States, from the smallest towns to the largest cities, exhibiting their casts of dwarfs, giants, Siamese twins, bearded ladies, savages, snake charmers, fire eaters, and other oddities. By today’s standards such displays would be considered cruel and exploitative—the pornography of disability. Yet for one hundred years the freak show was widely accepted as one of America’s most popular forms of entertainment. Robert Bogdan’s fascinating social history brings to life the world of the freak show and explores the culture that nurtured and, later, abandoned it. In uncovering this neglected chapter of show business, he describes in detail the flimflam artistry behind the shows, the promoters and the audiences, and the gradual evolution of public opinion from awe to embarrassment. Freaks were not born, Bogdan reveals; they were manufactured by the amusement world, usually with the active participation of the freaks themselves. Many of the "human curiosities" found fame and fortune, until the ascent of professional medicine transformed them from marvels into pathological specimens.

Brahmin Capitalism

Author : Noam Maggor
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674971469
Total Pages : 299 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (749 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Brahmin Capitalism by : Noam Maggor

Download or read book Brahmin Capitalism written by Noam Maggor and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Noam Maggor shows how the moneyed elite in Gilded Age Boston leveraged their wealth to forge transcontinental networks of commodities, labor, and transportation. With the decline of cotton-based textile manufacturing, these gentleman bankers found new business opportunities in the mines, railroads, and industries of the Great West.

A Nation of Counterfeiters

Author : Stephen Mihm
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674041011
Total Pages : 470 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis A Nation of Counterfeiters by : Stephen Mihm

Download or read book A Nation of Counterfeiters written by Stephen Mihm and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prior to the Civil War, the United States did not have a single, national currency. Counterfeiters flourished amid this anarchy, putting vast quantities of bogus bills into circulation. Their success, Mihm reveals, is more than an entertaining tale of criminal enterprise: it is the story of the rise of a country defined by freewheeling capitalism and little government control. Mihm shows how eventually the older monetary system was dismantled, along with the counterfeit economy it sustained.

Street Freak

Author : Jared Dillian
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1439181276
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (391 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Street Freak by : Jared Dillian

Download or read book Street Freak written by Jared Dillian and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-09-11 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Erroneously states "1st Touchstone hardcover edition" in paperback copy.

The Pricing of Progress

Author : Eli Cook
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674982541
Total Pages : 326 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (749 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Pricing of Progress by : Eli Cook

Download or read book The Pricing of Progress written by Eli Cook and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-25 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did Americans come to quantify their society’s well-being in units of money? In our GDP-run world, prices are the measure of not only goods and commodities but our environment, communities, nation, even self-worth. Eli Cook shows how, and why, we moderns lost sight of earlier social and moral metrics that did not put a price on everyday life.

Portfolio Society

Author : Ivan Ascher
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 1935408747
Total Pages : 193 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (354 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Portfolio Society by : Ivan Ascher

Download or read book Portfolio Society written by Ivan Ascher and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2016-09-02 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold extension of Marx's Capital for the twenty-first century: at once a critique of modern finance and of the societies under its spell. As financial markets expand and continue to refashion the world in their own image, the wealth of capitalist societies no longer presents itself, as it did to Karl Marx in the nineteenth century, as a “monstrous collection of commodities.” Instead, it appears as an equally monstrous collection of financial securities, and the critique of political economy must proceed accordingly. But what would it mean to write Capital in the twenty-first century? Are we really to believe that risk, rather than labor, is now regarded as the true fount of economic value? Can it truly be the case that the credit relation—at least in the global North—has replaced the wage relation as the key site of exploitation and political struggle? And finally, if precarity is indeed the name of today's proletarian condition, what possible future does it actually portend, what analysis does it require? Through a series of creative substitutions, in Portfolio Society Ivan Ascherextends Marx's critical project in bold and unexpected ways. Ascher not only explains some of the often mystifying processes of contemporary finance, he also invites us to consider what becomes of capitalism itself in those places where the relation of capital to its own future is now mediated by financial markets. In the end, we may find that much has changed and much has not; relations of domination endure, and mystifications abound, but the devil is in the details, and that is where Ascher directs our attention. At once a critique of modern finance and of the societies under its spell, Portfolio Society succeeds in revealing the potential limits of Capital, while reveling still in its limitless potential.

Freaks of Fortune, Or, Half Round the World

Author : Oliver Optic
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 316 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (319 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Freaks of Fortune, Or, Half Round the World by : Oliver Optic

Download or read book Freaks of Fortune, Or, Half Round the World written by Oliver Optic and published by . This book was released on 1876 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Reading the Market

Author : Peter Knight
Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 1421420619
Total Pages : 330 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (214 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Reading the Market by : Peter Knight

Download or read book Reading the Market written by Peter Knight and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America’s fascination with the stock market dates back to the Gilded Age. Winner of the BAAS Book Prize of the British Association of American Studies Americans pay famously close attention to “the market,” obsessively watching trends, patterns, and swings and looking for clues in every fluctuation. In Reading the Market, Peter Knight explores the Gilded Age origins and development of this peculiar interest. He tracks the historic shift in market operations from local to national while examining how present-day ideas about the nature of markets are tied to past genres of financial representation. Drawing on the late nineteenth-century explosion of art, literature, and media, which sought to dramatize the workings of the stock market for a wide audience, Knight shows how ordinary Americans became both emotionally and financially invested in the market. He analyzes popular investment manuals, brokers’ newsletters, newspaper columns, magazine articles, illustrations, and cartoons. He also introduces readers to fiction featuring financial tricksters, which was characterized by themes of personal trust and insider information. The book reveals how the popular culture of the period shaped the very idea of the market as a self-regulating mechanism by making the impersonal abstractions of high finance personal and concrete. From the rise of ticker-tape technology to the development of conspiracy theories, Reading the Market argues that commentary on the Stock Exchange between 1870 and 1915 changed how Americans understood finance—and explains what our pervasive interest in Wall Street says about us now.

An Age of Risk

Author : Emily C. Nacol
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400883016
Total Pages : 184 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis An Age of Risk by : Emily C. Nacol

Download or read book An Age of Risk written by Emily C. Nacol and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-30 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In An Age of Risk, Emily Nacol shows that risk, now treated as a permanent feature of our lives, did not always govern understandings of the future. Focusing on the epistemological, political, and economic writings of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, and Adam Smith, Nacol explains that in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain, political and economic thinkers reimagined the future as a terrain of risk, characterized by probabilistic calculation, prediction, and control. In these early modern sources, Nacol contends, we see three crucial developments in thought on risk and politics. While early modern thinkers differentiated uncertainty about the future from probabilistic calculations of risk, they remained attentive to the ways uncertainty and risk remained in a conceptual tangle, a problem that constrained good decision making. They developed sophisticated theories of trust and credit as crucial background conditions for prudent risk-taking, and offered complex depictions of the relationships and behaviors that would make risk-taking more palatable. They also developed two narratives that persist in subsequent accounts of risk—risk as a threat to security, and risk as an opportunity for profit. Looking at how these narratives are entwined in early modern thought, Nacol locates the origins of our own ambivalence about risk-taking. By the end of the eighteenth century, she argues, a new type of political actor would emerge from this ambivalence, one who approached risk with fear rather than hope. By placing a fresh lens on early modern writing, An Age of Risk demonstrates how new and evolving orientations toward risk influenced approaches to politics and commerce that continue to this day.

Freaks

Author : Annette Curtis Klause
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1439115664
Total Pages : 342 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (391 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Freaks by : Annette Curtis Klause

Download or read book Freaks written by Annette Curtis Klause and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-05-11 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If this is a dream, why does she seem so real? Though Abel Dandy was born to circus performers and grew up in a troupe of odd and inexplicable people, he has never felt limited by his normalcy--until now. Realizing he'll never be more amazing than the talented oddities around him, Abel can only dream of living a life richer than his own. But in his dreams a mysterious woman beckons him, calling him passionately by a name he doesn't know and speaking in a language he's never heard, but fully understands. Compelled by these visions and yearning to be more than ordinary, Abel embarks on a journey more frightening and wondrous than he ever imagined....

Freak Out

Author : Pauline Butcher
Publisher : Plexus Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0859657159
Total Pages : 551 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (596 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Freak Out by : Pauline Butcher

Download or read book Freak Out written by Pauline Butcher and published by Plexus Publishing. This book was released on 2023-09-11 with total page 551 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new, completely revised and updated edition contains a wealth of new material, excerpts from the author's diaries and private letters home about life in Hollywood. In 1967, 21-year-old Pauline Butcher was working for a London secretarial agency when a call came through from a Mr Frank Zappa asking for a typist.The assignment would change her life forever. For three years, Pauline served as Zappa's PA, moving with him, his family and the Mothers of Invention, to a log cabin in Laurel Canyon in the Hollywood Hills, where the 'straight' young English girl mixed with Oscar winners and rock royalty. Freak Out! is the captivating story of a naive young English girl thrust into the mad world of a musical legend as well as the most intimate portrait of Frank Zappa ever written.

Word Freak

Author : Stefan Fatsis
Publisher : HMH
ISBN 13 : 0547524315
Total Pages : 427 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (475 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Word Freak by : Stefan Fatsis

Download or read book Word Freak written by Stefan Fatsis and published by HMH. This book was released on 2001-07-07 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “marvelously absorbing” book is “a walk on the wild side of words and ventures into the zone where language and mathematics intersect” (San Jose Mercury News). A former Wall Street Journal reporter and NPR regular, Stefan Fatsis recounts his remarkable rise through the ranks of elite Scrabble players while exploring the game’s strange, potent hold over them—and him. At least thirty million American homes have a Scrabble set—but the game’s most talented competitors inhabit a sphere far removed from the masses of “living room players.” Theirs is a surprisingly diverse subculture whose stars include a vitamin-popping standup comic; a former bank teller whose intestinal troubles earned him the nickname “G.I. Joel”; a burly, unemployed African American from Baltimore’s inner city; the three-time national champion who plays according to Zen principles; and the author himself, who over the course of the book is transformed from a curious reporter to a confirmed Scrabble nut. Fatsis begins by haunting the gritty corner of a Greenwich Village park where pickup Scrabble games can be found whenever weather permits. His curiosity soon morphs into compulsion, as he sets about memorizing thousands of obscure words and fills his evenings with solo Scrabble played on his living room floor. Before long he finds himself at tournaments, socializing—and competing—with Scrabble’s elite. But this book is about more than hardcore Scrabblers, for the game yields insights into realms as disparate as linguistics, psychology, and mathematics. Word Freak extends its reach even farther, pondering the light Scrabble throws on such notions as brilliance, memory, competition, failure, and hope. It is a geography of obsession that celebrates the uncanny powers locked in all of us, “a can’t-put-it-down narrative that dances between memoir and reportage” (Los Angeles Times). “Funny, thoughtful, character-rich, unchallengeably winning writing.” —The Atlantic Monthly This edition includes a new afterword by the author.

The Wave

Author : Susan Casey
Publisher : Anchor Canada
ISBN 13 : 0385666683
Total Pages : 434 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (856 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Wave by : Susan Casey

Download or read book The Wave written by Susan Casey and published by Anchor Canada. This book was released on 2011-05-31 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting and rollicking tour-de-force about the terrifying power of nature's most deadly phenomena — colossal waves — and the scientists and super surfers who are obsessed with them. The New York Times bestselling author of The Devil's Teeth probes the dramatic convergence of baffling gargantuan waves that pummel oil rigs and sink massive ships, the extreme surfers willing to stare down death in order to ride them, and the marine scientists trying to unlock the physics of these waves, the climate changes that are provoking them, and what chaos they might wreak. Susan Casey explores the phenomenon of monster waves and how they have become an obsession for extreme surfers like Laird Hamilton — who serves as the author's guide as she takes the reader into the intense, white-knuckle world of 100-foot waves.