Bringing together fresh research of leading scholars from across the social sciences and humanities, including T. J. Jackson Lears, Peter Berkowitz, Daniel Walker Howe, Deirdre McCloskey, James Davison Hunter, Kiku Adatto, Robert Frank, and J. R. McNeill, the Project will culminate in a three-volume academic book series.

The project examines the social and moral sources of the “thrift ethos” long dominant among American ideals, traces its cultural ascendance, decline, and transformation, and considers thrift’s embattled and ambiguous present. Exploring the surprisingly rich and often provocative cultural career of thrift, this series offers an illuminating window onto the changing moral dimensions of American economic life and considers what is needed to develop an ethos of humane abundance.

The series is the result of a partnership between IASC and the Institute for American Values, underwritten by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

Thomas Hart Benton, Achelous and Hercules (1947).
Tempera and oil on canvas, mounted on plywood, 62 7/8 x 264 1/8 in.
© Thomas Hart Benton and Rita P. Benton Testamentary Trusts / UMB Bank Trustee / licensed by VAGA, NY
Photo: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC / Art Resource, NY