Accounting for Capitalism

The World the Clerk Made

Business & Finance, Economics, Economic History, Nonfiction, History, Americas, United States, 19th Century
Cover of the book Accounting for Capitalism by Michael Zakim, University of Chicago Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Michael Zakim ISBN: 9780226545899
Publisher: University of Chicago Press Publication: April 24, 2018
Imprint: University of Chicago Press Language: English
Author: Michael Zakim
ISBN: 9780226545899
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Publication: April 24, 2018
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Language: English

The clerk attended his desk and counter at the intersection of two great themes of modern historical experience: the development of a market economy and of a society governed from below. Who better illustrates the daily practice and production of this modernity than someone of no particular account assigned with overseeing all the new buying and selling? In Accounting for Capitalism, Michael Zakim has written their story, a social history of capital that seeks to explain how the “bottom line” became a synonym for truth in an age shorn of absolutes, grafted onto our very sense of reason and trust.

This is a big story, told through an ostensibly marginal event: the birth of a class of “merchant clerks” in the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century. The personal trajectory of these young men from farm to metropolis, homestead to boarding house, and, most significantly, from growing things to selling them exemplified the enormous social effort required to domesticate the profit motive and turn it into the practical foundation of civic life. As Zakim reveals in his highly original study, there was nothing natural or preordained about the stunning ascendance of this capitalism and its radical transformation of the relationship between “Man and Mammon.”

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

The clerk attended his desk and counter at the intersection of two great themes of modern historical experience: the development of a market economy and of a society governed from below. Who better illustrates the daily practice and production of this modernity than someone of no particular account assigned with overseeing all the new buying and selling? In Accounting for Capitalism, Michael Zakim has written their story, a social history of capital that seeks to explain how the “bottom line” became a synonym for truth in an age shorn of absolutes, grafted onto our very sense of reason and trust.

This is a big story, told through an ostensibly marginal event: the birth of a class of “merchant clerks” in the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century. The personal trajectory of these young men from farm to metropolis, homestead to boarding house, and, most significantly, from growing things to selling them exemplified the enormous social effort required to domesticate the profit motive and turn it into the practical foundation of civic life. As Zakim reveals in his highly original study, there was nothing natural or preordained about the stunning ascendance of this capitalism and its radical transformation of the relationship between “Man and Mammon.”

More books from University of Chicago Press

Cover of the book The Rhetoric of Pregnancy by Michael Zakim
Cover of the book Imagining Deliberative Democracy in the Early American Republic by Michael Zakim
Cover of the book Disruptive Acts by Michael Zakim
Cover of the book The Presence of Myth by Michael Zakim
Cover of the book Euripides V by Michael Zakim
Cover of the book The Accounts by Michael Zakim
Cover of the book Tim and Tom by Michael Zakim
Cover of the book Politics without Vision by Michael Zakim
Cover of the book A Socialist Peace? by Michael Zakim
Cover of the book Thinking Like a Political Scientist by Michael Zakim
Cover of the book Women and Weasels by Michael Zakim
Cover of the book University of Chicago Readings in Western Civilization, Volume 3 by Michael Zakim
Cover of the book Islands of History by Michael Zakim
Cover of the book Reading the World by Michael Zakim
Cover of the book Berlin for Jews by Michael Zakim
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy