Addressing the emergence and decline of US Fordism, this volume examines how an economy determines the language of those who live among its imperatives. It studies how the complexities of words and their histories derive from, and register, the organizing contradictions of an industrial economy, and of its failure. An incredibly exhaustive book that is unique in its erudition and mastery of complex economic mechanism, Fictions of Finance at the End of an American Century will doubtlessly capture the attention of anyone interested in contemporary American literature...The book's usage of close reading, however, offers a renewed outlook on the practice "as a means through which to recognize the historical density of utterance, and to sense the complexity of what enters our minds and comes out of our mouths"