| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Scott A. Sandage. Born Losers: A History of Failure in America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2005. Pp. x, 362. $35.00.
Scott A. Sandage explores the dark side of the American dream. Examining the lives and records of unsuccessful men, as well as the way the larger society regarded them, his book fills a significant gap in the scholarship on American capitalism. While there are studies of the work ethic, the ideal of the self-made man, the lives of successful entrepreneurs, and the transformation of capitalism, historians have neglected to examine those whose reach exceeded their grasp: the failures, who have been remarkably common in America's history.	1
The book takes up this subject and then goes further, exploring not just the meaning of failure but the meaning of identity in a market economy. Sandage maintains that, during the nineteenth century, a new definition of personal identity emerged: human worth (and especially, masculine worth) came to be measured in terms of market worth. Assessments of individual success and failure came to rest on bank balances and credit reports.	2
This carefully argued and well-researched book provides a compelling explanation for why and how this happened. The volatile economy of the nineteenth century led many Americans to reconsider the goal of life. While citizens of the early republic had idealized the yeoman, content with his modest competency and independent of larger financial entanglements, the market revolution of the nineteenth century led many to abandon this model of non-aspirational economic behavior and instead to try to rise in life. By midcentury, Sandage maintains, ambition had become an obligation, not a choice. Yet the same market revolution that filled so many with hope about their limitless futures also led many to founder and ultimately to fail. In this age of both boundless optimism and financial panic, Americans struggled to understand and explain failure.	. . .

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