A most informative and imaginative study of the many roles played by risk and the attempts to offset it in American economic development. Levy's insights will substantially enrich our understanding of the American past. (Stanley L. Engerman, author of Slavery, Emancipation, and Freedom: Comparative Perspectives)

There is a brilliance of mind and story on every page of Levy's intriguing and innovative study of American capitalism. Risk taking and risk management illuminate the economic history of the United States in the nineteenth century and prompt invaluable reflection on our own risky financial times. (Walter Licht, author of Industrializing America: The Nineteenth Century)

Freaks of Fortune is a bold new synthesis of nineteenth-century U.S. history. It illuminates the transformation of fundamental ideas about property, personhood, liberty, and security as an agrarian market society became a modern industrial state. In showing how an omniscient God yielded authority to the emerging statistical science of probability, Levy casts unprecedented light on the culture of American capitalism, past and present. This is a powerful and important book. (Jackson Lears, author of Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877–1920)