Investing in Life

Sharon Ann Murphy is an associate professor of history at Providence College.

• Series Editor's ForewordAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: New Risks in a Changing WorldPart I: The Creation of an Industry1. Understanding Mortality in Antebellum America: The Search for a Stable Business Model2. Selecting Risks in an Anonymous World: The Development of the Agency System3. Lying, Cheating, and Stealing versus The Court of Public Opinion: Preventing Moral Hazard and Insurance Fraud4. The Public Interest in a Private Industry: Life Insurance and the Regulatory-Promotional StatePart II: Reaching Out to the Middle Class5. Protecting Women and Children "in the hour of their distress": Targeting the Fears of an Emerging Middle Class6. Targeting the Aspirations of an Emerging Middle Class: The Triumph of Mutual Life Insurance Companies7. Securing Human Property: Slavery, Industrialization, and Urbanization in the Upper South8. Acting "in defiance of Providence"? The Public Perception of Life InsurancePart III: Cooperation, Competition, and the Quest for Stability9. Seeking Stability in an Increasingly Competitive Industry: The Creation of the American Life Underwriters' Convention10. Insuring Soldiers, Insuring Civilians: The Civil War as a Watershed for the Life Insurance Industry11. The Perils of Success during the Postbellum YearsConclusion: "Have you provided for your Family an Insuranceon your Life?"AppendixNotesEssay on SourcesIndex

A well-written, well-argued book that makes a number of important contributions to the history of business and capitalism in antebellum America. -- Sean H. Vanatta Common-Place An intriguing, instructive history of the establishment and development of the life insurance industry that reveals a good deal about changing social and commercial conditions in antebellum America... Highly recommended. Choice Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America is an exemplary piece of scholarship that upon publication immediately became the standard work in the field. -- Peter A. Coclanis Civil War Book Review Informative... Murphy's account indicates that virtually every issue and problem faced by the modern life insurance industry was present at its beginnings two centuries ago. -- Richard Sylla Journal of American History This book makes a fine contribution to the study of the history of the insurance business. -- Eric Hilt EH.Net A meticulous history of a significant but understudied event in the making of liberalism, the invention of life insurance. -- Michael Zakim Journal of the Early Republic Murphy has filled a gap in the historiography of American life insurance by mining the records of several companies that shaped the industry from 1830 through the Civil War... In pursuing her arguments, she discloses an impressive array of insights that shed light on American business and culture more generally. -- Timothy Alborn Business History Review In this sparkling volume, Sharon Ann Murphy makes an enormous contribution to scholarship in a wide range of fields... Murphy's careful and close examination of life insurance as a new and vital safety valve for thousands of emerging middle-class households touches on just about every niche in the historical panorama... I highly recommend this wide-ranging and multifaceted survey of the rise of the life insurance sector, its customers, and its beneficiaries. -- Edwin J. Perkins American Historical Review This under described state is the part of what makes Investing in Life so rewarding, but the book is carefully crafted enough to hold its own in any case. -- Liz McFall Enterprise and Society A highly readable book detailing the rise of the American insurance industry up to and through the Civil War... Important and provocative. -- Richard Sutch Journal of Economic History A very thorough examination of the birth and growth of the life insurance industry in America from the early 1800s through the Civil War. The author's research is exceptional... In short, this excellent book provides a look at matters of life and death in the Civil War era that you may not have considered before. -- James Schmidt Civil War Medicine (and Writing)