Navigating Failure: Bankruptcy and Commercial Society in Antebellum America . By Edward J. Balleisen. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Pp. xv, 322. $55.00, cloth; $18.75, paper.
本书研究19世纪美国周期性经济危机中的破产现象，聚焦1841年联邦破产法的短暂实施及其引发的争议，揭示破产制度如何为个人提供“重新开始”的机会。
From the late eighteenth through the nineteenth century, every generation of Americans endured, at more or less regular 20-year intervals, a severe macroeconomic crisis or Panic. In the presidential election after the Panic of 1837–1839, voters chased out the Democrats and gave the Whigs unified control of the federal government. The Whig Congress, rather than following the then standard practice of beginning business a full year after the elections, convened in March 1841. By August, the Whigs had passed a national bankruptcy law. A rush to the courts engendered considerable controversy. The twenty-seventh Congress repealed the act almost as quickly as it had enacted it. The gates to discharge were open only from February 1842 to March 1843. In this brief period, many individuals received a “fresh start.” In fact, discharges per capita were on the order of one in every 100 adult white males.