The Panic Of 1819 Large Print Edition

LARGE PRINT EDITION! More at LargePrintLiberty.com. The panic of 1819 was America's first great economic crisis. And this is Murray Rothbard's masterful account, the first full scholarly book on the topic and still the most definitive. Rothbard tells the story of a disaster that could not be attributed to some specific government blunder. It seemed to originate from within the economic system itself. Its cause was not obvious to observers at the time. Confronted with something new, the panic engendered much discussion and debate about possible causes and remedies. As Rothbard observes, the panic provides "an instructive picture of a people coming to grips with the problems of a business depression, problems which, in modified forms, were to plague Americans until the present day."

The Panic of 1819 tells the story of the first nationwide economic collapse to strike the United States. Much more than a banking crisis or real estate bubble, the Panic was the culmination of an economic wave that rolled through the United States, forming before the War of 1812, cresting with the land and cotton boom of 1818, and crashing just as the nation confronted the crisis over slavery in Missouri. The Panic introduced Americans to the new phenomenon of boom and bust, changed the country's attitudes towards wealth and poverty, spurred the political movement that became Jacksonian Democracy, and helped create the sectional divide that would lead to the Civil War. Although it stands as one of the turning points of American history, few Americans today have heard of the Panic of 1819, with the result that we continue to ignore its lessons—and repeat its mistakes.

Volume Two of A History of the Book in America documents the development of a distinctive culture of print in the new American republic. Between 1790 and 1840 printing and publishing expanded, and literate publics provided a ready market for novels, almanacs, newspapers, tracts, and periodicals. Government, business, and reform drove the dissemination of print. Through laws and subsidies, state and federal authorities promoted an informed citizenry. Entrepreneurs responded to rising demand by investing in new technologies and altering the conduct of publishing. Voluntary societies launched libraries, lyceums, and schools, and relied on print to spread religion, redeem morals, and advance benevolent goals. Out of all this ferment emerged new and diverse communities of citizens linked together in a decentralized print culture where citizenship meant literacy and print meant power. Yet in a diverse and far-flung nation, regional differences persisted, and older forms of oral and handwritten communication offered alternatives to print. The early republic was a world of mixed media. Contributors: Elizabeth Barnes, College of William and Mary Georgia B. Barnhill, American Antiquarian Society John L. Brooke, The Ohio State University Dona Brown, University of Vermont Richard D. Brown, University of Connecticut Kenneth E. Carpenter, Harvard University Libraries Scott E. Casper, University of Nevada, Reno Mary Kupiec Cayton, Miami University Joanne Dobson, Brewster, New York James N. Green, Library Company of Philadelphia Dean Grodzins, Massachusetts Historical Society Robert A. Gross, University of Connecticut Grey Gundaker, College of William and Mary Leon Jackson, University of South Carolina Richard R. John, Columbia University Mary Kelley, University of Michigan Jack Larkin, Clark University David Leverenz, University of Florida Meredith L. McGill, Rutgers University Charles Monaghan, Charlottesville, Virginia E. Jennifer Monaghan, Brooklyn College of The City University of New York Gerald F. Moran, University of Michigan-Dearborn Karen Nipps, Harvard University David Paul Nord, Indiana University Barry O'Connell, Amherst College Jeffrey L. Pasley, University of Missouri-Columbia William S. Pretzer, Central Michigan University A. Gregg Roeber, Pennsylvania State University David S. Shields, University of South Carolina Andie Tucher, Columbia University Maris A. Vinovskis, University of Michigan Sandra A. Zagarell, Oberlin College

For a while, it seemed impossible to lose money on real estate. But then the bubble burst. The financial sector was paralyzed and the economy contracted. State and federal governments struggled to pay their domestic and foreign creditors. Washington was incapable of decisive action. The country seethed with political and social unrest. In America's First Great Depression, Alasdair Roberts describes how the United States dealt with the economic and political crisis that followed the Panic of 1837. As Roberts shows, the two decades that preceded the Panic had marked a democratic surge in the United States. However, the nation’s commitment to democracy was tested severely during this crisis. Foreign lenders questioned whether American politicians could make the unpopular decisions needed on spending and taxing. State and local officials struggled to put down riots and rebellion. A few wondered whether this was the end of America’s democratic experiment. Roberts explains how the country’s woes were complicated by its dependence on foreign trade and investment, particularly with Britain. Aware of the contemporary relevance of this story, Roberts examines how the country responded to the political and cultural aftershocks of 1837, transforming its political institutions to strike a new balance between liberty and social order, and uneasily coming to terms with its place in the global economy.

The five volumes in A History of the Book in America offer a sweeping chronicle of our country's print production and culture from colonial times to the end of the twentieth century. This interdisciplinary, collaborative work of scholarship examines the book trades as they have developed and spread throughout the United States; provides a history of U.S. literary cultures; investigates the practice of reading and, more broadly, the uses of literacy; and links literary culture with larger themes in American history. Now available for the first time, this complete Omnibus ebook contains all 5 volumes of this landmark work. Volume 1 The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World Edited by Hugh Amory and David D. Hall 664 pp., 51 illus. Volume 2 An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture, and Society in the New Nation, 1790-1840 Edited by Robert A. Gross and Mary Kelley 712 pp., 66 illus. Volume 3 The Industrial Book, 1840-1880 Edited by Scott E. Casper, Jeffrey D. Groves, Stephen W. Nissenbaum, and Michael Winship 560 pp., 43 illus. Volume 4 Print in Motion: The Expansion of Publishing and Reading in the United States, 1880-1940 Edited by Carl F. Kaestle and Janice A. Radway 688 pp., 74 illus. Volume 5 The Enduring Book: Print Culture in Postwar America Edited by David Paul Nord, Joan Shelley Rubin, and Michael Schudson 632 pp., 95 illus.

Paper Money Men: Commerce, Manhood, and the Sensational Public Sphere in Antebellum America by David Anthony outlines the emergence of a "sensational public sphere" in antebellum America. It argues that this new representational space reflected and helped shape the intricate relationship between commerce and masculine sensibility in a period of dramatic economic upheaval. Looking at a variety of sensational media--from penny press newspapers and pulpy dime novels to the work of well-known writers such as Irving, Hawthorne, and Melville--this book counters the common critical notion that the period's sensationalism addressed a primarily working-class audience. Instead, Paper Money Men shows how a wide variety of sensational media was in fact aimed principally at an emergent class of young professional men. "Paper money men" were caught in the transition from an older and more stable mercantilist economy to a panic-prone economic system centered on credit and speculation. And, Anthony argues, they found themselves reflected in the sensational public sphere, a fantasy space in which new models of professional manhood were repeatedly staged and negotiated. Compensatory in nature, these alternative models of manhood rejected fiscal security and property as markers of a stable selfhood, looking instead toward intangible factors such as emotion and race in an effort to forge a secure sense of manhood in an age of intense uncertainty.