On the Make

Clerks and the Quest for Capital in Nineteenth-Century America

von Brian P. Luskey

290 Seiten, Hardcover

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

In the bustling cities of the mid-nineteenth-century Northeast, young male clerks working in commercial offices and stores were on the make, persistently seeking wealth, respect, and self-gratification. Yet these strivers and "counter jumpers" discovered that claiming the identities of independent men-while making sense of a volatile capitalist economy and fluid urban society-was fraught with uncertainty. In On the Make, Brian P. Luskey illuminates at once the power of the ideology of self-making and the important contests over the meanings of respectability, manhood, and citizenship that helped to determine who clerks were and who they would become. Drawing from a rich array of archival materials, including clerks' diaries, newspapers, credit reports, census data, advice literature, and fiction, Luskey argues that a better understanding of clerks and clerking helps make sense of the culture of capitalism and the society it shaped in this pivotal era.

• Reihe: NYU Press
• ISBN: 9780814752289
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 01.01.2010
• Größe: 229 x 152 mm
• Verlag: NYU Press - IPS