All That is Solid Bursts into Flame: Fire and Capitalism in the Nineteenth-Century United States | Daniel Immerwahr

In the nineteenth century, the United States dramatically adopted capitalist institutions. At the same time, the country suffered massive conflagrations, in city after city. This lecture asks about the connection between rapid economic growth and chastening environmental catastrophes. Or, more bluntly, what was it like to live in a combustible country?  

Daniel Immerwahr is Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities at Northwestern University. He is the author of How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States, a national bestseller and the winner of the Robert H. Ferrell Prize. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Harper’s, and other venues. He is writing a fire history of the United States.

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