TY - JOUR
AU - Rondinone, Troy
AB - Book Reviews A Nation of Deadbeats: An Uncommon History of eventually triggering crises of uncertainty (“sym- America’s Financial Disasters.ByScott Reynolds bolic doubt”) (p. 146). The sheer number of Nelson. (New York: Knopf, 2012. xvi, 330 pp. crashes since 1792 is enough to make any histo- $27.95.) rian stand back and wonder what makes the na- tion so susceptible to economic booms and busts. Following an entertaining preface starring Easy credit supplied by overleveraged lenders, Nelson’s Dodge Dart–driving repo-man father, complex financial instruments, a mortgage bo- which nicely frames the inner tension between nanza, unregulated banks, rising land values, and defaulting deadbeats and bold risk taking at the growing uncertainty—all followed by a cataclys- heart of the United States, Nelson proceeds to mic bust—is not the story of the 2008 financial tackle a series of financial panics and trace their crisis but rather the tale of the panic of 1837, consequences. He begins with William Duer, a in the hands of Scott Reynolds Nelson. A Nation colonial speculator and bank insider who sought of Deadbeats offers a fresh interpretation of Amer- to profit from the First Bank of the United ica’s past panics viewed through the stories of States. Duer 
TI - A Nation of Deadbeats: An Uncommon History of America's Financial Disasters
JF - The Journal of American History
DO - 10.1093/jahist/jat290
DA - 2013-09-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/a-nation-of-deadbeats-an-uncommon-history-of-america-s-financial-VICoM3JshS
SP - 479
EP - 480
VL - 100
IS - 2
DP - DeepDyve
ER -