{"product_id":"america-under-the-hammer-9781512826517","title":"America Under the Hammer","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eReveals how, through auctions, early Americans learned capitalism\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs the first book-length study of auctions in early America, \u003ci\u003eAmerica Under the Hammer\u003c\/i\u003e follows this ubiquitous but largely overlooked institution to reveal how, across the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, price became an accepted expression of value. From the earliest days of colonial conquest, auctions put Native land and human beings up for bidding alongside material goods, normalizing new economic practices that turned social relations into economic calculations and eventually became recognizable as nineteenth-century American capitalism.\u003cbr\u003eStarting in the eighteenth century, neighbors collectively turned speculative value into economic facts in the form of concrete prices for specific items, thereby establishing ideas about fair exchange in their communities. This consensus soon fractured: during the Revolutionary War, state governments auctioned loyalist property, weaponizing local\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Pennsylvania Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50059032396119,"sku":"9781512826517","price":27.9,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781512826517.jpg?v=1740454139","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/america-under-the-hammer-9781512826517","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}