false 520688 3085271 0385526199 9780385526197 106 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3085271.Blindspot_A_Novel 3.52 206 “Tis a small canvas, this Boston,” muses Stewart Jameson, a Scottish portrait painter who, having fled his debtors in Edinburgh, has washed up on America’s far shores. Eager to begin anew in this new world, he advertises for an apprentice, but the lad who comes knocking is no lad at all. Fanny Easton is a lady in disguise, a young, fallen woman from Boston’s most prominent family. “I must make this Jameson see my artist’s touch, but not my woman’s form,” Fanny writes, in a letter to her best friend. “I would turn my talent into capital, and that capital into liberty.”

Liberty is what everyone’s seeking in boisterous, rebellious Boston on the eve of the American Revolution. But everyone suffers from a kind of blind spot, too. Jameson, distracted by his haunted past, can’t see that Fanny is a woman; Fanny, consumed with her own masquerade, can’t tell that Jameson is falling in love with her. The city’s Sons of Liberty can’t quite see their way clear, either. “Ably do they see the shackles Parliament fastens about them,” Jameson writes, “but to the fetters they clasp upon their own slaves, they are strangely blind.”

Written with wit and exuberance by longtime friends and accomplished historians Jane Kamensky and Jill Lepore, Blindspot weaves together invention with actual historical documents in an affectionate send-up of the best of eighteenth-century fiction, from epistolary novels like Richardson’s Clarissa to Sterne’s picaresque Tristram Shandy. Prodigiously learned, beautifully crafted, and lush with the bawdy, romping sensibility of the age, Blindspot celebrates the art of the Enlightenment and the passion of the American Revolution by telling stories we know and those we don’t, stories of the everyday lives of ordinary people caught up in an extraordinary time.

]]> 520688 3.54 228 113 77397 3.66 397 142 2008 1878785 0670018414 9780670018413 5 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1189646755m/1878785.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1189646755s/1878785.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1878785.Exchange_Artist 3.44 18 The startling story of an early American dreamer whose wily schemes made him a founding father of our speculation nation

Rediscover a lost chapter in early American history: the story of financial-pioneer-turned-confidence-man Andrew Dexter, Jr., and the skyscraper for which he amassed—and then lost—a paper fortune. In the 1790s, printed money and banks themselves were still regarded with tremendous suspicion, as traditional strictures about moneylending slowly made way for modern freewheeling capitalism. A pioneer in the new age of paper, Dexter challenged the notions of his Puritan ancestors by embarking on a wild career in real estate speculation, all financed by the string of banks he commandeered and the millions of dollars they freely printed. Upon this paper pyramid he built the tallest building in the United States—the Exchange Coffee House, a seven-story colossus in downtown Boston. But in early 1809, just as the exchange was ready for unveiling, the scheme collapsed. In Boston, the exchange became an opulent but largely vacant building, a symbol of monumental ambition and failure.

Kamensky deftly steers the reader through this history, providing a riveting historical narrative of a second American founding: the birth of speculative capitalism. The book will appeal to fans of Peter Bernstein’s Against the Gods, John Gordon’s Empire of Wealth, and Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton, as well as Ross King’s Brunelleschi’s Dome.]]> 520688 3.54 228 113 2008 6429994 0143114905 9780143114901 1 http://www.goodreads.com/images/books/64/994/6429994-m-1255898719.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/books/64/994/6429994-s-1255898719.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6429994-the-exchange-artist 4.33 3 The riveting story of the country’s first banking scandal in the first decades of the American republic

This enthralling historical narrative of the birth of speculative capitalism in America opens in the 1790s when financial pioneer-turned-confidence-man Andrew Dexter, Jr. created a pyramid scheme founded on real estate speculation and the greed of banks, who freely printed the paper money he needed to finance the then tallest building in the United States—the Exchange Coffee House, a 153-room, seven-story colossus in downtown Boston. The story of Dexter’s rise and eventual collapse offered an object lesson to the rising young nation, and presents striking parallels to the subprime mortgage meltdown and looming economic collapse of today.]]> 520688 3.54 228 113 2008 6549675 1410415791 9781410415790 1 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6549675-blindspot 5.00 1 520688 3.54 228 113 77397 3.66 397 142 2009 7111626 1433257602 9781433257605 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7111626-blindspot 0.0 0 520688 3.54 228 113 77397 3.66 397 142 2008 7111625 0385526202 9780385526203 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7111625-blindspot 0.0 0 520688 3.54 228 113 77397 3.66 397 142 2009 7111627 0385528531 9780385528535 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7111627-blindspot 0.0 0 520688 3.54 228 113 77397 3.66 397 142 2008 1045687 0195130901 9780195130904 0 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1180478729m/1045687.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1180478729s/1045687.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1045687.Governing_the_Tongue_The_Politics_of_Speech_in_Early_New_England 0.0 0 520688 3.54 228 113 1998 4745484 0195080157 9780195080155 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4745484.The_Colonial_Mosaic_American_Women_1600_1760 0.0 0 Colonial "women's work" was hard, physical labor. In the South, the urgency of farming crops for export stretched a woman's workday from sunrise to sunset (and beyond). It was not much different in New England, though the goal was more often to maintain the family and set aside enough to get through the harsh winter. In the 17th and early 18th century, nearly endless toil marked the lives of the majority of American women, regardless of their region, color, or status.
Life for women and men began to change in the late 17th century as slavery became an accepted economic solution. For the planter's wife, it meant a life of increased ease. For the thousands of black women who were brought to the colonies in chains, the exact opposite was true. In the North, cities such as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia saw thousands of new immigrants living side by side with Anglo Americans, enslaved African Americans, and a growing free black community. It was here that so-called "she merchants" began to be a factor in growing professions such as newspaper printing, forging new paths for themselves and helping to fuel booming urban economies.
But most women in the colonies, enslaved and free, were farm wives; giving birth to child after child, spending all their waking hours doing backbreaking work. Yet, some women entered the era of the revolution with rising expectations. They were marrying whom and when they chose, or choosing to remain unmarried. They were seeking divorces when their marriages became unbearable. They were not only listening to revival preaching, but delivering God's message themselves. They were fleeing cruel masters in search of a better life.
The Colonial Mosaic finds that women's voices were heard, though not all in the same tones or claiming the same rights. But they spoke nonetheless, to whomever would listen: to their husbands, to male leaders in their churches and towns, and especially to each other. They were not feminists by today's definition, but they began a tradition of persistence and loyalty that has served women well into the 20th century.]]> 520688 3.54 228 113 1995 6858191 1433257610 9781433257612 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6858191-blindspot 0.0 0 520688 3.54 228 113 77397 3.66 397 142 2008 7371834 0641972970 9780641972973 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7371834-the-exchange-artist 0.0 0 520688 3.54 228 113 2008