The first comprehensive financial history of the United States in more than thirty years. Accessible to undergraduate level readers, it focuses on the growth and expansion of banking, securities, and insurance from the colonial period right up to the incredible growth of the stock market during the 1990s and the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. The author traces the origins of American finance to the older societies of Europe and Northern Africa, and shows how English merchants transferred their financial systems to America. He explains how financial matters dominated the founding and development of the colonies, and how financial concerns incited the Revolution. And he shows how the Civil War began the transformation of America from a small economy largely dependent on foreign capital into a complex capitalist society. From the Civil War, the nation's financial history breaks down into periods of frenzied speculation, quiet growth, periodic panics, and furious periods of expansion, right up through the incredible growth of the stock market during the 1990s.

Senator: 1876-1965 “The Life and Career of Elmer Thomas” expounds the incredible life and times of Senator John William Elmer Thomas, one of America’s most committed and influential politicians and its unsung heroes. Elmer Thomas was from a generation that not only helped to build the country but also devoted his life to serving it. This book is a thorough examination of the events and influences that shaped him from his early days growing up on a farm in Indiana to his travels in the Wild West and Oklahoma where he took up residence. It was here that he was elected to the Oklahoma state senate (1927-1951) and ultimately became a member of the US Congress and later the US Senate.

Maintaining the same high standards of the first edition, published in 1973, this new, revised edition is still the most comprehensive one-volume history of a state that was once thought of as "a bridge to somewhere else." In revising, Elliott summarizes the state's economic, political, and social history since 1973 and strengthens a major point he made then: that Nevada's acceptance of liberal marriage and divorce laws and of legalized gambling brought economic stability to a state singularly devoid of stable economic resources. -- from Book Jacket