Panic!

“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

“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

“Panic is filled with keen insights. . . . It importantly resuscitates stories and recasts tropes from early twentieth century America.”-Literature & History

“Provocative and thoughtful. . . . Zimmerman reveals a world of ideas that intellectual and cultural historians will find fascinating. . . . A worthy, fascinating addition to the growing scholarship that seeks to explore and explain the cultural history of capitalism.” — Journal of American History

“Meticulously researched and equally well-written. . . . Thorough and masterful. . . . Zimmerman himself has scored a victory with this book. Panic! Markets, Crises, and Crowds in American Fiction is a winner.” — Business History 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

“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

“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

“Zimmerman’s innovative book goes far to fill a void in our understanding of the literary history of an important period in which financial collapse and panic powerfully affected the course of U.S. fiction. His work will take a deservedly prominent place in scholarship of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.” — Cecelia Tichi, Vanderbilt University

“Impressively informed about both American fiction and the history of American finance, Zimmerman’s book provides literary insights as well as sharp cultural analysis of the resonances market panics had in U.S. mass culture, politics, and class and gender relations. Frequently surprising, always illuminating, his study moves us far beyond our familiar generalizations about literature and the market.” — Randall Knoper, University of Massachusetts, Amherst