Sandage, Scott A. Born Losers: A History of Failure in America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005.

Summary
This book charts mainly white businessmen and sometimes their wives, who, from the panics of 1819 to 1893, fell into monetary trouble and thus “tells the story of America’s unsung losers: men who failed in a nation that worships success.” He tells the other side of the market revolution story. The “go-ahead” notion of success that emerged during the 1830s and 1860s was shared by a culture of losing that likewise '''redefined American notions of selfhood. '''In the 19th century, when capitalism came of age and entrepreneurship became the primary model of American identity, the language of business was applied to the soul. An emerging capitalist economy came to dominate nearly every aspect of daily life, thereby transforming cultural values. Over the century the meaning of the word "failure" broadened significantly, from an incident in commercial life (a "breaking in business," as an early-nineteenth-century dictionary defined the word) to an identity (a wasted or ruined existence). This change shows the extent to which capitalism influenced and changed people’s behaviors. People came to be defined in terms of their market function: Human worth in the 19th century came to be measured by market worth.

Example: Mercantile Agencies and the Big Red Book changed the language of failure, directed it toward the character of the individual. Credit ledgers “reflected new vocabularies of success and failure. Loser was once a neutral word for anybody who lost property, often by theft or natural disaster… In credit reports, losers were men who had taken the brunt (and often the blame) in a deal gone bad.” (p. 130-1)Each report rated the man along one question: “What is this man good for? Ratings such as A1 were used to classify superior ability.

See also: Charles Sellers, Harry Watson, Stuart Blumin