Serena R. Zabin

New York in the decades before the American Revolution was a wild place, where reputation could get a man (and sometimes a woman) far, where extending credit was both necessary to succeed and a serious risk. Zabin examines the roles that race, class, and gender played in letting some people succeed commercially, sometimes to the detriment of others; there was some freedom in the joints even as coverture and slavery made white maleness systematically more successful.