On Tuesday, November 29, four scholars will speak about their contributions to the new book "Capitalism Takes Command." The panelists include Edward Baptist (Cornell), Elizabeth Blackmar (Columbia), Jonathan Levy (Princeton) and Michael Zakim (Tel Aviv). This event is free and open to the public.  A reception will immediately follow.

Capitalism Takes Command presents original histories of the commercialization of farming, the creation of a national mortgage market, the collateralization of slaves, the invention of office systems, and more—an inventory of means by which capitalism became America’s new revolutionary tradition. This collection of essays argues that capitalism’s effects reached far beyond the purview of the economy. As business ceaselessly revised its own practices, a new demographic of private bankers, insurance brokers, investors in securities, and young clerks hoping to make partner, among many others, assumed center stage, displacing older elites and forms of property. Explaining how capital became an “ism” and how business became a social philosophy, Capitalism Takes Command brings the economy back into the mainstream of American history.
 
Panelists will discuss
·    "Capitalism:  An American Revolutionary Tradition" (Zakim)
·    "Toxic Debt, Liar Loans, Collateralized and Securitized Human Beings, and the Panic of 1837" (Baptist)
·    "Inheriting Property and Debt: From Family Security to Corporate Accumulation" (Blackmar)
·    "The Mortgage Worked the Hardest: The Fate of Landed Independence in Nineteenth-Century America" (Levy)

Capitalism Takes Command
Tuesday, November 29
6:30-8:30pm
Butler Library, room 523

This event is sponsored by the Columbia New York Business History Forum.