Sociologically trenchant."Deeply critical and deeply caring."

My expectations for this book were high and the results were underwhelming. I was looking forward to revisiting American history through the eyes of pioneering merchants trying to carve out a living in the ruthless boom and bust world of frontier business. The idea that America was built from sweat, mistakes and failed attempts appealed to me.

The author attempts to weave this narrative but the book gets bogged down by dense language, disjointed citations and historical examples that are, frankly, not that interesting. ( )

A couple of points not mentioned by the first reviewer who, in part, I agree with. Born Losers is built on Sandage's PhD dissertation hence the abundance of citations, etc., and its relatively narrow focus.

One of the important contributions of this book is not only its treatment of a rarely acknowledged topic but its tracing of the rise of the use of the term "failure" as applying to an individual human being whereas previously it had been exclusively reserved for objects, including businesses. In the rush to expand commerce and reduce risk during expansion, a time when farmers and merchants were no longer dealing with local people whose character they could personally vouch for, a need arose to estimate the business-worthiness of individuals in the absence of personal acquaintance.

The chaos of "economic growth" and the push westward fostered idle gossip, legend, and hearsay. Any adverse tale could ruin a man for life. In the midst of this, agencies such as the Mercantile Exchange stepped in to try to codify the worthiness of a man as a business partner or vendor, etc. Eventually this lead to individuals being rated personally as failures rather than failure being a thing that happened to an individual's business or enterprise.

Sandage doesn't attempt to explain the causes of this development but rather to chronicle the changes, as any good historian should do. It is left to us to interpret this history according to our own knowledge and experience (and biases).

For instance, it might be assumed if a drought occurred on a farm one season and a farmer's crop was ruined, then that farmer was personally at fault because he was not favored or beloved of God. An easy conclusion for many of the Calvinist-leaning believers of the earlier years of this country.

Similarly, the scientific, as opposed to the religious, angle could also be called into service to explain the unsavory fact of failure. Darwin in the 1800's posed a serious problem for many pious Americans but, making use of his ideas in the form of so-called "Social Darwinism" were compelling. A given person's low mercantile rating, for instance, could conveniently be explained away by asserting that that individual suffered from some sort of congenital inferiority.

But to return to the first reviewer, I don't think it is a valid criticism to cite the lack of success stories included in the book. There are tomes upon tomes devoted to that subject, not to mention that Sandage's title should alert anyone tempted to pick up this book that it is not about Success.

Also, it is not accurate to conclude from this book that Sandage is implying that the 18- and 1900's birthed such an enormous number of failures simply because Sandage doesn't attempt to balance the examination with an equal amount of success stories.

Scott A. Sandage has made a valuable contribution to the history of this nation by paying attention to an all too common phenomenon that is all too often is ignored - failure, failing, losing- in favor of more uplifting and happier themes, the plain salt-of- the-earth-hard-working winner (mostly mythological), winners-against-all-odds (rare), or just plain winners, those who, in the words of Billy Martin, were born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple. ( )

In Born Losers: A History of Failure in America, author Scott A. Sandage points out that the nineteenth century, despite being an age of capitalism, industrialization, and promise, was also an age of great economic hardship and loss for men and women who together created a culture of failure that personally and morally defined them. Society and the government held people individually accountable for failure despite circumstance, and relief was hard to come by because the government did not have the systems in place to manage it. When failure occurred, it was “a reason, in the man.” The prevailing idea that “no one fails who ought not fail” identified men to such a point that failure was a matter of personal worth, morality, and virtue. That only a man himself could be blamed for failure no matter the cause created a multitude of dynamics: drive vs. risk, innovation vs. safety, and failure vs. the possibility of any future success. Once failure was stuck to you and became a part of your identity, it was a hard label to shake. Especially with the birth of Tappan’s very first credit report agency that sent out personal information to aid in assessing the possible risk and success of others.

Sandage’s greatest strength lies in his usage of primary source documents and the many stories and examples they provide his book. They, large in number, not only give creditability to the story, but they raise interest so that the book is enjoyable to read. It is an illuminating and fun look at something that is normally depressing in nature—failure and stigma placed on personal identity. It is obvious by the number of sources used and documented that Sandage has put a great deal of research into the book. In the sense that it is well researched and documented, it is a reputable piece of scholarship for something paid little attention to. Sandage also suitably links the identity of failure to today by tracing how ideas and perceptions formed into what modern people think and feel. There is a clear connection between past and present, which gives the book modern day relevancy.

I would have liked, though, a section to provide a less narrow focus. Perhaps not for the whole book, because the subject itself makes it necessary to focus on specifics, but a chapter to help place failure within the larger scheme of things. While Sandage provides a great number of failure stories, his success stories are few and far between such that it is hard to get a grasp of whether failure was as prevalent and powerful as made to seem suggested by primary source evidence and first hand accounts. It is impossible to tell from the book if failure, while still being a serious issue of self identity and crisis, was a small percentage as compared to relative successes. The evidence given begs the question: would the government have acted faster to aid those in need if failure was truly so prevalent? The answer is: I don’t know. Nevertheless, the question and answer could have been addressed to further illuminate the culture of failure and its political ramifications. It would have also helped to frame the larger scope of American life and identity to pay more attention to the successes and contributions of women, the poor, and laborers. While not as numerous or as devastating as riches to rags middle class male business failure/success stories, as culture defined these things, it would still serve to paint a more complete image of the situation experienced by all of America, not just business men. This would also include black men and a more in depth look at how failure and success came to define them during the Antebellum and Reconstruction years.

Sandage does not try to define, “what is failure?” That is not the point of the book or his reasons for writing it. The book is about how failure was perceived and how it came to define people and their worth. Failure is simply what it is: a lack of success. Born Losers was written to tell the other side of America in an age of trumped success and unlimited possibility.

Sandage is not only a great historian, but an excellent storyteller. There is no droning of dry, fact-by fact history here. Sandage paints a picture that reads as easily and fun as a novel, even more entertaining because he is speaking of something real and relevant. There is a lot of humor in the story, but none done out of disrespect. The book, while funny and fun, stays respectful to the people involved. You will definitely feel like you got something out of this book by the time you put it down, whether it be from the vast knowledge or the pure entertainment value. We all love to laugh at tragedy, after all, especially when it is not our own. ( )

"'The great American Assumption,' noted W.E.B. DuBois, 'was that wealth is mainly the result of its owner's effort and that any average worker can by thrift become a capitalist.' But the post [Civil] war transformation of the corporate and industrial economy made this ideal harder than ever to attain.... Yet 'the great American Assumption' promoted the idea that men who were failures simply lacked ability, ambition, or both; what had once been said of the captives of slavery now belittled the misfits of capitalism. The new birth of freedom was an ideology of achieved identity; citizen and slave gave way to success and failure as the two faces of American freedom. That ideal depended not only on the chance of success but on the risk of failure." pg. 18

"Onward and upward sloganeering [for the new 19th century ideals of manhood] drowned out the older ideal of yeoman competency, which valued the maintenance of current status and plenitude more than the cultivation of risky ambitions. The man with 'a competency' (in the language of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries) sustained his independence by land ownership and contentment, providing for his family today and squirreling away necessary resources against tomorrow's troubles.... [By the new ideals,] 'I got along tolerably well' was a failure's epitaph." pg. 81

"In 1880, neurologist George Beard diagnosed 'American Nervousness' as a form of 'nervous bankruptcy.' He listed among its causes the phenomenal increase in 'business transactions' and 'the stimulus given, to Americans to rise out of the position in which they were born.' .... Ironically, chronic stress was becoming a mark of middle-class status, proof of one's relentless drive to succeed." pg. 234

"We would rather pay to ignore the advice of therapists and self-help books than freely accept what Thoreau advised after the panic of 1857. 'The merchants and banks are suspending and failing all the country over, but not the sand-banks, solid and warm, and streaked with bloody blackberry vines,' he wrote. 'Invest, I say, in these country banks. Let your capital be simplicity and contentment.'" pg. 271

"Over the past two hundred year in the United States, the image of failure has shifted from the overambitious bankrupt to the under-ambitious plodder.... in a 1999 interview [Arthur Miller, playwright of "Death of a Salesman" - the iconic story of a man's failure] explained why failure means oblivion. 'The whole idea of people failing with us is that they can no longer be loved.... People who succeed are loved because they exude some magical formula for fending off destruction, fending off death. It's the most brutal way of looking at life that one can imagine, because it discards anyone who does not measure up.'" pp. 276-7