A professor emerita of history at George Mason University, Paula Petrik is the author of No Step Backward: Women and Family on the Rocky Mountain Mining Frontier (1990) and a coeditor, with Elliott West, of Small Worlds: Children and Adolescents in America, 1850-1950 (1992). A recipient of Fulbright, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Smithsonian fellowships as well as an Apple Computer Faculty Internship, among others, she has published articles on women in the American West, the U.S. toy industry, and new media. She is currently working on a history of the Helena, Montana, banks and the Panic of 1893.
Using the experience of Erastus D. Edgerton, a western banker who managed three banks during the Panic of 1893 and subsequent depression, this lecture explores Gilded Age corruption and business ethics.