| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Exchange Artist: A Tale of High-Flying Speculation and America's First Banking Collapse. By Jane Kamensky. (New York: Viking, 2008. xxii, 442 pp. $29.95, ISBN 978-0-670-01841-3.)
It is hard to characterize this history. It is not what the title, however provocative, promises. There is speculation, and there is a banking collapse, but neither is given a context in U.S. financial history. A particular building that existed in Boston for a mere decade, the Exchange Coffee House, or "Changery" is the touchstone for the story and the main character is its builder, Andrew Dexter Jr., whose early success, and failure, were in banking. The book, however, is about much more than those two subjects.	1
Dexter was born in 1779. After college, he went to Boston to study law with his influential uncle, Samuel Dexter. He passed the bar in 1803 and by 1805 was involved in a newly formed business, the Exchange Bank, which promised to provide exchange between various bank notes circulating.	. . .

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