The Economy of Promises: Trust, Power, and Credit in America

A comprehensive and illuminating account of the history of credit in America—and how it continues to divide the haves from the have-nots

The Economy of Promises is a far-reaching study of credit in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America. Synthesizing and surveying economic and social history, Bruce Carruthers examines how issues of trust stitch together the modern U.S. economy. In the case of credit, that trust involves a commitment by debtors to repay money they have borrowed from lender...