Winner, Hagley Prize in Business History, Hagley Museum and Library and the Business History Conference Investing in Life considers the creation and expansion of the American life insurance industry from its origins in the 1810s through the 1860s and examines how its growth paralleled and influenced the emergence of the middle class. Using the economic instability of the period as her backdrop, Sharon Ann Murphy examines insurance as both a business and a social phenomenon. She looks at how insurance companies positioned themselves within the marketplace, calculated risks associated with disease, intemperance, occupational hazard, and war, and battled fraud, murder, and suicide. She also discusses the role of consumers--their reasons for purchasing life insurance, their perceptions of the industry, and how their desires and demands shaped the ultimate product. "In this sparkling volume, Murphy makes an enormous contribution to scholarship in a wide range of fields . Murphy's careful and close examination of life insurance as a new and vital safety valve for thousands of emerging middle-class households touches on just about every niche in the historical panorama . I highly recommend this wide-ranging and multifaceted survey of the rise of the life insurance sector, its customers, and its beneficiaries."-- American Historical Review "Murphy's account indicates that virtually every issue and problem faced by the modern life insurance industry was present at its beginnings two centuries ago.

"-- Journal of American History "Murphy has filled a gap in the historiography of American life insurance by mining the records of several companies that shaped the industry from 1830 through the Civil War . In pursuing her arguments, she discloses an impressive array of insights that shed light on American business and culture more generally."-- Business History Review "A well-written, well-argued book that makes a number of important contributions to the history of business and capitalism in antebellum America."-- Common-Place.