Caley Horan. Insurance Era: Risk, Governance, and the Privatization of Security in Postwar America. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2021. 264pp. ISBN 978-0-226-78438-0, $40.00 (cloth).

Abstract

waiting to be sewn into the fabric. Besides the social significance, Marsh also reconstructs Atlantic sericulture as a fascinating cultural space, such as its impact on early American nationalism. Unfortunately, the approach of the book also offers Marsh little help to thoroughly interpret the “intertwining of the international and the local” cultures (7). The diverse populations of silk workers brought distinctive religions, ideologies, and technologies into the Atlantic World. Marsh mentions the heterogeneous silk raisers, including Catholics, FrenchHuguenots, German speakers, Italian immigrants, and Scots-Irish Presbyterians, in Europe and theNewWorld. The author notices the collective modes of production within Meso-American communities and the Spanish Viceroy’s insistence on channeling the profits of sericulture to individual Native Americans (68–69, 74). He also touches on transnational networks of knowledge when discussing Jesuits’ transmittingAsian silkpractices toFranceorEzraStiles’s reading theories from China and Italy. However, the book seldom explicates whether or how the wild array of cultures and ideas clashed and integrated, thus (re)shaping the landscape of the Atlantic sericulture. Weaving these treads more tightly into the narrative might have helped prove that commercial failures could also facilitate cultural hybridization. In general, Unravelled Dreams recovers the causes and consequences of a forgotten history, highlights contemporaries’ coping and compromising with contingencies, and, like all good books, inspires the readers to think and explore more into the story. Thus, while Marsh’s point of departure was a commercial failure, the unique perspective renders the book a success.