Synopses & Reviews
During the economic depression of the 1890s and the speculative frenzy of the following decade, fiction writers published scores of novels that explored the new cultural visibility of Wall Street, high finance, and market crises. Blending literary, historical, and cultural analysis, Zimmerman investigates how writers turned to fledgling research in mob psychology, psychic investigations, and conspiracy discourse to understand how mass acts of reading and popular participation in the corporate transformation of the American economy could trigger financial disaster and cultural chaos.
Review
"Notable. . . . Proves that the literary form of the novel is the one best suited to describe and analyze market crowds."
American Literary History
Review
"Provides fascinating readings of both forgotten writers and more familiar ones. . . . At the vanguard of an emerging scholarly interest in the culture of the market."
Journal of American Studies
Review
Frequently surprising, always illuminating, his study moves us far beyond our familiar generalizations about literature and the market.
Randall Knoper, University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Review
...
Panic! is a worthy, fascinating addition to the growing scholarship that seeks to explore and explain the cultural history of capitalism.
Stephen Mihm, University of Georgia
Review
Panic! is a well-written, well-researched study and a worthy addition to the literature of economic and literary history.
Scott Dalrymple, Hartwick College
Review
[Zimmerman's] work will take a deservedly prominent place in scholarship of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Cecelia Tichi, Vanderbilt University
Review
"Rich in the anecdotes and details that capture the cultural context of the decades that straddled the turn of the twentieth century."
American Historical Review
Review
"An inventive and valuable addition to the scholarship addressing the interpenetration of economics and literature specifically and to studies of the modern United States more generally. . . . An imaginative and rich analysis of financial panic's literary coordinates."
-Modern Fiction Studies
Review
"Both a valuable contribution to the field and a methodological exemplar for further study. . . . Many studies provide context, but
Panic! shifts seamlessly between strict historicism and the innovative, culturally specific histories necessary for a full understanding of the novels Zimmerman discusses. . . . Remarkably deep analyses."
-Studies in American Naturalism
Review
"A fascinating study. . . . Should be on the reading list not only of Americanists but also of other scholars interested in the intersections of fictional narrative and financial modernity."
-Novel
Review
"Zimmerman's well-written and dexterous genre study fills a long-standing disciplinary void and deserves a prominent position in the literary history of the period."
American Literature
About the Author
David A. Zimmerman is associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.