The Culture of Debt

THE SUBPRIME CRISIS, Greece, MF Global: what’s next? A casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that debt is the modern opiate, certain to wreak havoc on all those who indulge it. Not so, assures Louis Hyman, in his retrospective tour of American credit. He tells us that borrowing “is a tool ... it is as good—and as bad—as the man” who uses it. No, wait: that was Shane on the merit of firearms. But it is the idea that Hyman was aiming for when he wrote that “easy access to credit is neither a good thing nor a bad thing, it depends on context.” This is an imprecise sentence, symptomatic of the verbal clumsiness that frequently detracts from Borrow: The American Way of Debt, a volume that nonetheless offers a fresh perspective on the epic changes in American culture wrought by consumer finance.