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The epic story of a founding father of our speculation nation
The
EXCHANGE ARTIST:
A TALE OF HIGH-FLYING SPECULATION
and
AMERICA’S FIRST BANKING COLLAPSE
BY JANE KAMENSKY
“Engaging social history by a talented scholar with a distinct gift for narrative.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“This is a fascinating historical narrative of Dexter, his associates, and events surrounding the nation’s first bank failure.”
—Booklist |
Two centuries before the collapse of the sub-prime real estate market caused investors around the world to question the contents of their paper portfolios, a wily New England entrepreneur triggered a crisis of value that shook the nation’s confidence in money itself. THE EXCHANGE ARTIST: A Tale of High-Flying Speculation and America’s First Banking Collapse by Jane Kamensky (Viking; On-Sale Date: January 24, 2008; ISBN: 978-0670-01841-3; Pages: 464; Price: $29.95) rediscovers a lost chapter in early American history: the story of Andrew Dexter, Jr. and the seven-story skyscraper for which he amassed—and then lost—a paper fortune. Equal parts Benjamin Franklin, Jay Gatsby, and Donald Trump, Dexter envisioned an early version of the American dream of rising without limits. His spectacular fall forced his compatriots to wake from that dream.
The story opens in the 1790s, when paper money and banks themselves were still regarded with suspicion as longstanding strictures against money lending slowly yielded to modern freewheeling capitalism. A pioneer in the new age of paper, Dexter embarked on a wild career in real estate and currency speculation, issuing millions of dollars in paper money through a string of banks stretching from Boston to Detroit. Upon this paper pyramid he built what was arguably the first American skyscraper: the Exchange Coffee House, a 153-room, 102,000-square-foot, seven-story colossus—a mega-Starbucks with a stock exchange, a dance floor, meeting rooms, and a hotel—in downtown Boston. But in early 1809, just as the Exchange was ready for unveiling, the financial pyramid collapsed. Dexter, reviled in the press, absconded to Canada. Looming over the steeples of pious Boston, the ’Change remained. A modern Babel, the era’s pundits called this monument to Dexter’s high-flying ambition, and his equally monumental failure. Finally, a decade after its ill-fated construction, “Dexter’s Folly” collapsed in a spectacular fire.
While researching what she originally imagined as a history of American coffee culture, Kamensky came across the Exchange Coffee House, perhaps the largest coffee house ever built. The building led her to Dexter, and she found herself hooked by this once infamous, now-forgotten character—not hero or villain, but both. Like many pioneers, Dexter was a scheme and a dreamer, a visionary whose blindness extracted a terrible cost from those who placed their trust in his promises. In Jane Kamensky’s deft hands, we see in his adventures the birth pangs of the institutions—and the crises—that we now take so much for granted. THE EXCHANGE ARTIST is a riveting historical narrative of a second American founding: the birth of speculative capitalism.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jane Kamensky teaches history at Brandeis University. She is the author of Governing the Tongue: The Politics of Speech in Early New England and The Colonial Mosaic: American Women, 1600-1760. She is a consultant and on-camera expert for documentaries shown on PBS and The History Channel, and has made appearances on National Public Radio and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In 2000, she co-founded
Common-place, an award-winning online journal that she co-edited from 2000 to 2004. She lives in Cambridge with her husband and two children.
The Exchange Artist: A Tale of High-Flying Speculation and America’s First Banking Collapse
Jane Kamensky
Hardcover | 464 pages | ISBN 9780670018413 | 24 Jan 2008 | Viking Adult | $29.95
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