Morals and Markets: The Development of Life Insurance in the United States

First published in 1979, Morals and Markets (Columbia University Press) pointed out the bizarre ins and outs of life insurance and explored how it developed in the United States. Viviana A. Rotman Zelizer explains that life insurance, when it first came out, was stigmatized and criticized as a gamble on human life, but now it has become a widely-praised way to secure a family’s future, and Zelizer argues that this is because of changing attitudes in America toward death, money, family, and personal legacy.