Howells, Edith Wharton and Frank Norris. Knight also offers a perceptive analysis of Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man (1857) as a prehistory of that figure in the American collective imagination. In showing how coded, privileged information prevailed – in both the financial and high social worlds – throughout the period, he once again argues against the ‘standard story’ of the economic sociological transition from status to contract in the workings of the market; rather, he illustrates ‘the continuing importance of the rhetoric and the reality of personal connections in a seemingly impersonal market’ (p. 145). These final two chapters show Knight at his interdisciplinary best, alternating seamlessly between dense accounts of legal and business history, literary analysis and sociological theory; each insight shining greater light on the whole picture. One genre of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era that is barely considered in the book is drama. However, the transcripts at the end of Chapter Five of the Pujo Committee hearings of 1912 on monopolistic abuses in the banking and related trust sectors provide some wonderfully theatrical exchanges, none more so than the cross-examination of J. P. Morgan, in which he shamelessly insists he has ‘‘‘Not the slightest’’’ influence over any aspect of American industry (p. 233). Diagrams and charts produced at the time of the hearings show Morgan at the very centre of a complex web of holdings, an image that Knight significantly relates to late-twentieth-century conceptual artworks mapping contemporary financial and political networks of influence. As his book concludes: ‘these vernacular modes of reading the market have never been so necessary, nor so fraught’ (p. 257).

中文翻译：

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凯特墨菲，无线背后：BBC 的早期女性历史凯特，无线背后：BBC 早期女性的历史（帕尔格雷夫麦克米伦，2016 年），第 vii + 295 页，21.00 英镑

豪威尔斯、伊迪丝·沃顿和弗兰克·诺里斯。奈特还对赫尔曼·梅尔维尔 (Herman Melville) 的《信心人》(The Confidence-Man，1857) 进行了敏锐的分析，将其视为美国集体想象中那个人物的史前史。在展示编码的特权信息如何在整个时期内盛行时——无论是在金融界还是上流社会——他再次反对市场运作中从地位到契约的经济社会学转变的“标准故事”；相反，他说明了“在看似非个人的市场中，修辞和个人联系的现实的持续重要性”（第 145 页）。最后两章展示了奈特跨学科的最佳状态，在法律和商业史、文学分析和社会学理论的密集叙述之间无缝交替；每一个洞见都在整个画面上闪耀着更大的光芒。书中几乎没有考虑的镀金时代和进步时代的一种类型是戏剧。然而，1912 年普约委员会关于银行业和相关信托部门垄断滥用的听证会第五章结尾的笔录提供了一些精彩的戏剧交流，尤其是对摩根大通的盘问，他无耻地坚持他对美国工业的任何方面都“没有丝毫影响”（第 233 页）。听证会期间制作的图表显示摩根处于复杂的资产网络的中心，奈特与描绘当代金融和政治影响网络的 20 世纪后期概念艺术作品密切相关。正如他的书总结的那样：