James Forten (1766–1842) was in business in Philadelphia for almost half a century. A sailmaker by trade, he invested the profits from his sail-loft in real estate, bank stock, and shares in various ventures, including railroads. He was also a money-lender. Throughout his long career in business, Forten struggled to be accepted as an astute and successful member of the business community who happened to be a man of color. As this essay demonstrates, that was how some of his white peers saw him. To others, however, he was a man of color first and a man of business second.

An 1890s loan book of the Bank of A. Levy permits a detailed examination of the lending operations of a private bank in California during the National Banking Era (1864–1914). This period has been intensively analyzed at the national and state level, but there are few studies of banks at the firm level. This unregulated bank was integrated into money markets and lent to a broad cross section of the community. Although the bank appeared to adhere to the real bills doctrine, it provided businesses with medium-term, uncollateralized financing. The bank priced risk carefully, offering rates equal to the lowest in the country to its best customers while charging extraordinarily high rates to borrowers deemed risky. In the absence of modern accounting, the bank's close scrutiny of borrowers' businesses and personal lives enabled it to fulfill a special intermediary role.

The stock market crash of 1929, a major trauma that still haunts the national memory, has received surprisingly little attention from scholars in seventy years and has produced even less agreement as to its causes and consequences. This review of the literature suggests that the disagreements and debates over the crash reveal as much about what can and cannot be known for certain about the event as they do about potential answers to the mysteries of the crash.