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"The
Exchange Artist is a dazzling, disturbing account of
rising and falling in early America, a tale of towering
ambition and catastrophic collapse. How can millions of
dollars of investment vanish into thin air? In
beautiful, lyrical prose, Jane Kamensky artfully exposes
the fragility of the paper economy in a nation one
British visitor called ‘the land of speculation.’ This
book is as much a history of a banking crisis as an
excavation of the foundations of the American economy.
It will astonish."
—Jill Lepore, Harvard University
Author of The Name of War: King Philip's War and the
Origins of American Identity (Winner of the Bancroft
Prize) and New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and
Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan (Pulitzer
Prize finalist)
"The book is a ripping good read and an instructive one.
It’s also testimony to the pleasures and privileges of
serious scholarly research. Kamensky loved doing this
book and her writing shows it. So much greater, then,
the reward to her readers."
—David Landes, Harvard University
Author of the New York Times bestselling The Wealth and
Poverty of Nations, and Dynasties
"This shrewd and eloquent biography of a building, a
man, and the speculative culture they reflect is bound
to delight as well as disturb. Americans are indeed
hustlers, and none so unabashed as the scions of Puritan
New England. Bravo, Kamensky!"
—Walter A. McDougall, University of Pennsylvania
Author of...the Heavens and the Earth: A Political
History of the Space Age (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize)
and Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American
History 1585-1828
"The Exchange Artist is an absolute summit of historical
insight and writing. Simply as story, it mesmerizes. But
it also opens to view an entire era—a cultural
gestalt—the effects of which are with us still. The
sinews and tissues of early capitalism are brilliantly
revealed here, alongside a cast of extraordinary, yet
exemplary, characters. Taken as a whole, the book sets a
new standard of excellence—something to inspire both
readers and practitioners of narrative history."
—John Demos, Yale University
Author of The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from
Early America (Winner of the National Book Award) and Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early
New England (Winner of the Bancroft Prize)
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