Mongrel Firebugs and Men of PropertyConventional stories about American history, its origins and unfolding, do not feature capitalism. Other tales about the countrys history usually take priority. If capitalism figures at all, it is to foreground opportunity, entrepreneurial vigour, material abundance, and the seven league boots of manifest destiny. Conflict may rear its unseemly facebut only episodically, as a kind of alien or aberrant detour off the main road of Americas exceptional