Tracing the shifting fortunes and changing character of New York City's economic elite over half a century, Sven Beckert brings to light a neglected--and critical--chapter in the social history of the U.S.: the rise of an American bourgeoisie. The Monied Metropolis is the first comprehensive history of New York's economic elite, the most powerful group in nineteenth-century America. Beckert explains how a small and diverse group of New Yorkers came to wield unprecedented economic, social, and political power from 1850 to the turn of the twentieth century. He reveals the central role of the Civil War in realigning New York's economic elite, and how the New York bourgeoisie reoriented its ideology during Reconstruction, abandoning the free labor views of the antebellum years for laissez-faire liberalism. Sven Beckert is the Dunwalke Associate at Harvard University. He is the recipient of several honors and fellowships, including the Aby Warburg Foundation prize for academic excellence, a MacArthur Dissertation Fellowship and a Andrew W. Mellon fellowship. This is his first book. As broadcast by his title, Beckert (history, Harvard) locates the classical late 19th-century American capitalist coalition of major industry, big finance, and large-scale mercantilism securely in New York City. Beckert's ambitious history covers the Manhattan upper crust with the same thoroughness that Sean Wilentz's reserved for the pre-Civil War New York working class, but while Wilentz's brilliant Chants Democratic (LJ 3/15/84) displayed a singing prose style that has made him a celebrity intellectual, Beckert's flawlessly constructed treatise rewards only expert readership. The author demonstrates that the city's emergent industrial interests found common ground during the Civil War with the de facto pro-Southern mercantile elite and that the resulting alliance of Big Money and Big Manufacturing dominated national politics thereafter. Beckert's revisiting the private charity-public relief debate of the 1870s is a timely reminder that political discourse exists in a continuum. Academic libraries supporting the most serious research in modern U.S. urban, business, and social history will need this book for their collections, as will the major borough publics, but most general-interest libraries will want to pass. Scott H. Silverman, Bryn Mawr Coll. Lib., PA Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. "...a deftly told account of the Manhattan bourgeoisie's impressively shrewd negotiation of the ever-shifting terrain of the American political and economic landscape. As such, it yields thought-provoking insights into the ways in which power has been--and continues to be--acquired and exercised in the U.S." Publishers Weekly "A fascinating history of New York during the late nineteenth-century, a time when big money was changing the face of the city....dazzingly successful." Kirkus "...this is, in general, a deftly told account of the Manhattan bourgeoisie's impressively shrewd negotiation of the ever-shifting terrain of the American political and economic landscape. As such, it yields thought-provoking insights into the ways in which power has been - and continues to be - acquired and exercised in the U.S." Publishers Weekly "A fascinating history of New York during the late 19th-century, a time when big money was changing the face of the city....dazzlingly successful." Kirkus Reviews "...he has drawn deftly on an immense body of recent historical work on the period as well on extensive New York archives." William R. Taylor, washingtonpost.com "...an exceptionally vivid and intelligent tour of a revolutionary class at the peak of its domination. It is indispensable for anyone wishing to understand how a profoundly class-bound society managed to convince itself that class was irrelevant to the U.S. experience." " Newark Star Ledger Ruth Century contains an explosive theme...Profesor Beckert also draws several illuminating parallels between then and now." Dallas Morning Star "...Mr. Beckert...even in our own post-Marzist age, this approach to history can still bear fruit." The New York Observer "Steven Beckert's sober, scholarly study of New York in the 19th century contains an explosive theme: The wealthy class that ruled Gothsm and the rest of the nation did everything in its power to make sure that the working class did not advance from poverty(wait until you draws serveral illuminating parallels between then and now." Dallas Morning News "Libraries will purchase The Monied Metropolis and historians will cite it." Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era This book, first published in 2001, is a comprehensive history of nineteenth-century New York City's powerful economic elite. "Sven Beckert's Monied Metropolis is an extraordinary work of scholarship, certain to have a major impact on how we understand social change in the nineteenth century. Beckert deftly illuminates the complex interplay of economic, social, and