Americans today often think of thrift as a negative value a miserly hoarding of resources and a denial of pleasure. Even more telling, many Americans don't even think of thrift at all anymore. Franklin s Thrift challenges this state of mind by recovering the rich history of thrift as a quintessentially American virtue.

The contributors to this volume trace how, from the eighteenth century on, the idea and practice of thrift has been a robust part of the American vision of economic freedom and social abundance. For Benjamin Franklin, who personified and promoted the idea,...