Sink or Swim by Andrew Kopec - 9781469690162

Sink or SwimCapitalist Selfhood and Nineteenth-Century American Literature\nAuthor(s): Andrew Kopec\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: The University of North Carolina Press, United States\nImprint: The University of North Carolina Press\nISBN-13: 9781469690162, 978-1469690162\nSynopsis\nPeople living in the nineteenth-century United States saw shocking upheavals in both the economy and in ideas of selfhood in a commercial society. Narratives such as Horatio Alger's rags-to-riches tales allured Americans with visions of financial success, while events such as the Panics of 8 9, 837, 857, and 8 5 threatened them with sudden and devastating financial failure. The antebellum period's \""go-ahead\"" ethos encouraged individuals to form an identity amid this chaos by striving for financial success through risk-takingthat is, to form a capitalist self. Andrew Kopec argues that writers of this era were not immune to this business turbulence rather, their responses to it shaped the development.