Card Sharps And Bucket Shops

Author : Ann Fabian
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136685642
Total Pages : 270 pages
Book Rating : 4.44/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Card Sharps and Bucket Shops written by Ann Fabian and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-16 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a highly readable work that engages topics in American cultural, social and business history, Ann Fabian details the place of gambling in industrializing America. Card Sharps and Bucket Shops investigates the relationship between gambling and other ways of making profit, such as speculation and land investment, which became entrenched during the nineteenth century. While all these undertakings ran counter to deeply ingrained American--and Protestant--work ethics, only gambling took on a stigma that made other efforts to acquire wealth socially acceptable. Fabian considers here the reformers who sought to ban gambling; psychological explanations for the deviant gambler; numbers games in the African American community; and efforts by speculators to draw distinctions between their own activities and gambling. She combines first-rate cultural analysis with rigorous research, and along the way provides a wealth of colorful details, characters and anecdotes.

Author : Ann Fabian
Publisher : Ithaca : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.86/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Card Sharps, Dream Books, & Bucket Shops written by Ann Fabian and published by Ithaca : Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Ann Fabian
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 113668557X
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Card Sharps and Bucket Shops written by Ann Fabian and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-16 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Author : Thomas Ruys Smith
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 9780807137369
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.67/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Blacklegs, Card Sharps, and Confidence Men written by Thomas Ruys Smith and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2010-05 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1836 Benjamin Drake, a midwestern writer of popular sketches for newspapers of the day, introduced his readers to a new and distinctly American rascal who rode the steamboats up and down the Mississippi and other western waterways -- the riverboat gambler. These men, he recorded, "dress with taste and elegance; carry gold chronometers in their pockets; and swear with the most genteel precision.... Every where throughout the valley, these mistletoe gentry are called by the original, if not altogether classic, cognomen of 'Black-legs.'" In Blacklegs, Card Sharps, and Confidence Men, Thomas Ruys Smith collects nineteenth-century stories, sketches, and book excerpts by a gallery of authors to create a comprehensive collection of writings about the riverboat gambler. Long an iconic figure in American myth and popular culture but, strangely, one that has never until now received a book-length treatment, the Mississippi River gambler was a favorite character throughout the nineteenth century -- one often rich with moral ambiguities that remain unresolved to this day. In the absorbing fictional and nonfictional accounts of high stakes and sudden reversals of fortune found in the pages of Smith's book, the voices of canonized writers such as William Dean Howells, Herman Melville, and, of course, Mark Twain hold prominent positions. But they mingle seamlessly with lesser-known pieces such as an excerpt from Edward Willett's sensationalistic dime novel Flush Fred's Full Hand, raucous sketches by anonymous Old Southwestern humorists from the Spirit of the Times, and colorful accounts by now nearly forgotten authors such as Daniel R. Hundley and George W. Featherstonhaugh. Smith puts the twenty-eight selections in perspective with an Introduction that thoroughly explores the history and myth surrounding this endlessly fascinating American cultural icon. While the riverboat gambler may no longer ply his trade along the Mississippi, Blacklegs, Card Sharps, and Confidence Men makes clear the ways in which he still operates quite successfully in the American imagination.

Author : Amy Edwards
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520385470
Total Pages : 383 pages
Book Rating : 4.74/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Are We Rich Yet? written by Amy Edwards and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2022-06-14 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth history of how finance remade everyday life in Thatcher's Britain. Are We Rich Yet? tells the story of the financialization of British society. During the 1980s and 1990s, financial markets became part of daily life for many Britons as the practice of investing moved away from the offices of the City of London, onto Britain’s high streets, and into people’s homes. The Conservative Party claimed this shift as evidence that capital ownership was in the process of being democratized. In practice, investing became more institutionalized than ever in late-twentieth-century Britain: inclusion frequently meant tying one’s fortunes to the credit, insurance, pension, and mortgage industries to maintain independence from state-run support systems. In tracing the rise of a consumer-oriented mass investment culture, historian Amy Edwards explains how the "financial" became such a central part of British society, not only economically and politically, but socially and culturally, too. She shifts our focus away from the corridors of Whitehall and towards a cast of characters that included brokers, bankers and traders, newspaper editors, goods manufacturers, marketing departments, production companies, and hundreds of thousands of ordinary men and women. Between them, they shaped the terrain upon which political and economic reform occurred. Grappling with the interactions between structural transformation and the rhythms of everyday life, Are We Rich Yet? thus understands the rise of neoliberalism as something other than the inevitable outcome of a carefully orchestrated right-wing political revolution.

Author : Stuart Banner
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190623047
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Speculation written by Stuart Banner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the difference between a gambler and a speculator? Is there a readily identifiable line separating the two? If so, is it possible for us to discourage the former while encouraging the latter? These difficult questions cut across the entirety of American economic history, and theperiodic failures by regulators to differentiate between irresponsible gambling and clear-headed investing have often been the proximate causes of catastrophic economic downturns. Most recently, the blurring of speculation and gambling in U.S. real estate markets fueled the 2008 global financialcrisis, but it is one in a long line of similar economic disasters going back to the nation's founding.In Speculation, author Stuart Banner provides a sweeping and story-rich history of how the murky lines separating investment, speculation, and outright gambling have shaped America from the 1790s to the present. Regulators and courts always struggled to draw a line between investment and gambling,and it is no easier now than it was two centuries ago. Advocates for risky investments have long argued that risk-taking is what defines America. Critics counter that unregulated speculation results in bubbles that always draw in the least informed investors-gamblers, essentially. Financial chaos isthe result. The debate has been a perennial feature of American history, with the pattern repeating before and after every financial downturn since the 1790s. The Panic of 1837, the speculative boom of the roaring twenties, and the real estate bubble of the early 2000s are all emblematic of thedifficulty in differentiating sober from reckless speculation. Even after the recent financial crisis, the debate continues. Some, chastened by the crash, argue that we need to prohibit certain risky transactions, but others respond by citing the benefits of loosely governed markets and the dangersof over-regulation. These episodes have generated deep ambivalence, yet Americans' faith in investment and - by extension - the stock market has always rebounded quickly after even the most savage downturns. Indeed, the speculator on the make is a central figure in the folklore of Americancapitalism.Engaging and accessible, Speculation synthesizes a suite of themes that sit at the heart of American history - the ability of courts and regulators to protect ordinary Americans from the ravages of capitalism; the periodic fallibility of the American economy; and - not least - the moral conundruminherent in valuing those who produce goods over those who speculate, and yet enjoying the fruits of speculation. Banner's history is not only invaluable for understanding the fault lines beneath the American economy today, but American identity itself.

Author : Jonathan Levy
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674071123
Total Pages : 425 pages
Book Rating : 4.24/5 ( download)

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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 Fortune is one of the first books to excavate the historical origins of our own financialized times and risk-defined lives.

Author : Patricia Cline Cohen
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134958889
Total Pages : 286 pages
Book Rating : 4.87/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Calculating People written by Patricia Cline Cohen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-07-22 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now back in print, A Calculating People reveals how numeracy profoundly shaped the character of society in the early republic and provides a wholly original perspective on the development of modern America.

Author : Nan Goodman
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136693483
Total Pages : 214 pages
Book Rating : 4.89/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Shifting the Blame written by Nan Goodman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-16 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When someone gets hurt in an accident we reflexively ask a set of questions which ultimately comes down to who was blameworthy? Yet early nineteenth-century Americans were entirely, and to the modern reader, astonishingly, uninterested in this line of reasoning. Their concern was whether an accident had happened and not why. Nan Goodman takes this transformation in legal and popular thought about the nature of accidents as a starting point for a broad inquiry into changing conceptions of individual agency-and ultimately of self-in industrializing America. Goodman looks to both conventional historical sources and the literary depiction of accidents in the work of Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Charles Chesnutt, and others to explain the new ways that Americans began to make sense of the unplanned.

Author : George Robb
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 0252099745
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.48/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Ladies of the Ticker written by George Robb and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2017-08-16 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long overlooked in histories of finance, women played an essential role in areas such as banking and the stock market during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet their presence sparked ongoing controversy. Hetty Green's golden touch brought her millions, but she outraged critics with her rejection of domesticity. Progressives like Victoria Woodhull, meanwhile, saw financial acumen as more important for women than the vote. George Robb's pioneering study sheds a light on the financial methods, accomplishments, and careers of three generations of women. Plumbing sources from stock brokers' ledgers to media coverage, Robb reveals the many ways women invested their capital while exploring their differing sources of information, approaches to finance, interactions with markets, and levels of expertise. He also rediscovers the forgotten women bankers, brokers, and speculators who blazed new trails--and sparked public outcries over women's unsuitability for the predatory rough-and-tumble of market capitalism. Entertaining and vivid with details, Ladies of the Ticker sheds light on the trailblazers who transformed Wall Street into a place for women's work.