Uncovered: The Story of Insurance in America
Join us on September 11th as Katherine Hempstead discusses her book Uncovered: The Story of Insurance in America. This book explores the history of the insurance business and its regulation in the United States from the 1870s through the twentieth century and focuses on the friction between the public demand for insurance and the private imperatives of insurers. Hempstead traces the history of the industry from the early days of life, fire, and casualty insurance to the development of state regulation in the late nineteenth century and examines the role that insurers initially played in a largely voluntary social safety net and how this changed over time. The book examines how periodic crises in life, fire, health, auto, and liability insurance highlighted gaps between the coverage that insurers were willing to provide and what the public demanded, and how over time insurers and the government have become more interdependent. For all of us interested in the history of insurance in the United States, Hempstead’s book is an informative “must read” and her talk will be one you will want to hear.
