Jane Kamensky teaches history at Brandeis University. She is the author of Governing the Tongue: The Politics of Speech in Early New England and The Colonial Mosaic: American Women, 1600-1760. She is a consultant and on-camera expert for documentaries shown on PBS and The History Channel, and has made appearances on National Public Radio and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In 2000, she co-founded Common-place (www.common-place.org), an award-winning online journal that she co-edited from 2000 to 2004. She lives in Cambridge with her husband and two children.
"There is a very evident enthusiasm of discovery in Kamensky's The
Exchange Artist that animates her narrative of a high-flying
developer and the banks and investors dragged down by his
overreaching need for money to build his towering dream."
-The Boston Globe
"This shrewd and eloquent biography of a building, a man, and the
speculative culture they reflect is bound to delight as well as
disturb."
-Walter A. McDougall, University of Pennsylvania, author of The
Heavens and the Earth
Brandeis history professor Kamensky (The Colonial Mosaic) recounts the story of Andrew Dexter, a chronically overleveraged real estate developer who engineered profound shifts in the economy and skyline of turbulent early America. Dexter built the seven-story Boston Exchange Coffee House, an extraordinarily ambitious project, and helped create a regional exchange system that made banknotes from distant rural locations acceptable in Boston. Unfortunately for his reputation, he is more often remembered as the man responsible for the first bank failure in the United States in 1809. Although he spent the last 30 years of his life on the run from numerous creditors and died in debt, he never stopped juggling visionary projects. Kamensky devotes almost as much attention to the Exchange Coffee House and its impact on contemporary thought as she does to Dexter's biography. She also weaves in an account of Nathan Appleton, born, like Dexter, in 1779, but destined for a longer and much more prosperous and respectable life fighting against Dexter and his ilk. This is a charming popular account of an often-overlooked aspect of American history. B&w photos and illus. (Jan.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.
"There is a very evident enthusiasm of discovery in Kamensky's
The Exchange Artist that animates her narrative of a
high-flying developer and the banks and investors dragged down by
his overreaching need for money to build his towering dream."
-The Boston Globe
"This shrewd and eloquent biography of a building, a man, and the
speculative culture they reflect is bound to delight as well as
disturb."
-Walter A. McDougall, University of Pennsylvania, author of The
Heavens and the Earth
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