Tesco
The Exchange Artist
Book

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.

Take-Aways

  • Andrew Dexter Jr. was a “paper man” par excellence – an entrepreneur, speculator and risk taker.
  • He was as entrepreneurial and risk-taking as America’s revered founders, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Only, he was a criminal.
  • Dexter believed deeply in the American dream. He searched for it, but never achieved it.

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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