"It is hard to write engagingly about insurance and the history of statistics. Bouk has succeeded in this feat . . . a very ambitious book." ― The American Historical ReviewLong before the age of "Big Data" or the rise of today's "self-quantifiers," American capitalism embraced "risk"—and proceeded to number our days. Life insurers led the way, developing numerical practices for measuring individuals and groups, predicting their fates, and...

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2022From the historian Dan Bouk, a lesson in reading between the lines of the U.S. census to uncover the stories behind the data.The census isn’t just a data-collection process; it’s a ritual, and a tool, of American democracy. Behind every neat grid of numbers is a collage of messy, human stories—you just have to know how to read them.In Democracy’s Data...

Some years ago, The Economist carried a lead editorial, ‘The puzzling failure of economics’. The frank admission was provoked by the publication of a new edition of Paul Samuelson’s Economist. The editorial concluded that it ‘is not a failure of economics, in fact, but of modern [neo-classical] economics’.The authors argue there is nothing puzzling about this failure. They document how the integrity of economics as a discipline was deliberately compromised towards the end of the 19t...

Until the nineteenth century, “risk” was a specialized term: it was the commodity exchanged in a marine insurance contract. Freaks of Fortune tells how the modern concept of risk emerged in the United States. Born on the high seas, risk migrated inland and became essential to the financial management of an inherently uncertain capitalist future.

**Winner of the Lillian Smith Book AwardWinner of the Los Angeles Times Book PrizeFinalist for the National Book AwardThe Nation's "Most Valuable Book"“[A] vibrant intellectual history of the radical right.”—The Atlantic“This sixty-year campaign to make libertarianism mainstream and eventually take the government itself is at the heart of Democracy in Chains. . . . If you're worried about what all this means for Ameri...

Life insurance—the promise of an insurer to pay a sum upon a person's death in exchange for a regular premium—is a bizarre enterprise. How can we monetize human life? Should we? What statistics do we use, what assumptions do we make, and what behavioral factors do we consider? First published in 1979, Morals and Markets Is a pathbreaking study exploring the development of life insurance in the United States. Viviana A. Rotman Zelizer combines economic history and a sociological pe...

The New York Times–bestselling "gossipy, funny, sometimes infuriating, and moving tale of two women so similar and yet so different" ( NPR).The relationship between Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg—Republican and Democrat, Christian and Jew, western rancher's daughter and Brooklyn girl—transcends party, religion, region, and culture. Strengthened by each other's presence, these groundbreaking judges, the first and second to serve on the ...

To gain a deep understanding of contract law, one needs to master not only the rules and principles of the field, but also its underlying theory and justification, and its long and intricate history. This book offers an accessible introduction to all aspects of American contract law, useful to both first-year law students and advanced contract scholars. The book is grounded on up-to-date scholarship and contains detailed references to cases, statutes, Restatements and international legal p...

**#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A dramatic expansion of a groundbreaking work of journalism, The 1619 Project: A New American Origin Story offers a profoundly revealing vision of the American past and present.ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, NPR, Esquire, Marie Claire, Electric Lit, Ms. magazine, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist**In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of...

"Thomas writes with precision and grace (and a lovely lack of jargon) about ten cases that established the full reach and scope of Title VII." ― The Boston GlobeBest known as a monumental achievement of the civil rights movement, the 1964 Civil Rights Act also revolutionized the lives of America's working women. Title VII of the law made it illegal to discriminate "because of sex." But that simple phrase didn't mean much u...

The United States has long epitomized capitalism. From its enterprising shopkeepers, wildcat banks, violent slave plantations, huge industrial working class, and raucous commodities trade to its world-spanning multinationals, its massive factories, and the centripetal power of New York in the world of finance, America has come to symbolize capitalism for two centuries and more. But an understanding of the history of American capitalism is as elusive as it is urgent. What does it mean to ma...

“Law in America is a little gem. It is a peerless introduction to our legal history—concise, clear, tellingly told, and beautifully written. The greatest living historian of American law has done it again.”—Stanley N. Katz,former president of the American Society for Legal History and the Organization of American Historians“All societies have laws, but neither all laws nor all legal systems are alike. No one has thought more deeply or written...