The Exchange Artist
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The Exchange Artist

A Tale of High-Flying Speculation and America's First Banking Collapse

Jane Kamensky
Penguin, 2008
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Background
  • Engaging

Recommendation

Andrew Dexter Jr. is the villain of historian Jane Kamensky’s book on America’s first bank failure, which occurred in the early 1800s. He used worthless banknotes to finance construction of Boston’s Exchange Coffee House, at seven stories the U.S.’s tallest building at the time. In the process, he financially ruined hundreds of laborers who worked on the project. By the time they learned that his banknotes were bogus, Dexter was long gone. Kamensky deftly tells his tale with fascinating detail and little-known facts. In brilliant writing, she traces the rise of “speculative capitalism.” She offers the bittersweet saga of a man with little conscience and big dreams he never fulfilled. getAbstract finds that her book compellingly depicts America’s early financial history – and, perhaps, one facet of its emerging fiscal personality – through the tale of this colorful charlatan.

Summary

The Speculator’s Dream

In Boston, in the early 19th century, the Exchange Coffee House was a perfect metaphor for the nascent American Republic and its “gospel of ascent” and open opportunity. Andrew Dexter Jr., who conceptualized, created and , some might say, conjured the building, was a bold speculator, just like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and many other early U.S. founders; only unlike them, he was a con artist. In Dexter’s America, popular myth said you could become anything you wanted. Born shortly after the Revolution, he bought this noble vision wholeheartedly. It was true for many and it almost came true for the daring Dexter, dreamer and fraudster. For a time he achieved wealth and prominence by painstaking chicanery, but he died an angry pauper. His personal tale and the story behind his remarkable building were hugely improbable.

Young Man on the Make

Dexter was born in 1779 in rural Massachusetts, grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, and completed Rhode Island College in 1798. In his graduation address, he proudly embraced the American “gospel of aspiration,” proclaiming that the “hatchet of industry, wielded by the...

About the Author

Jane Kamensky chairs Brandeis University’s history department. She has won numerous, prestigious academic awards and fellowships. The author of Governing the Tongue, she is an expert on North American history before 1830.

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