Money makes the world go round, as they say, and this mantra is illuminated quite well in this book. The History of Money by Jack Weatherford is split into three main sections, each dealing with a different era of money. The first is the development of coinage with the standardization of weights and measures associated with getting that correct. The second era covers the development of banks and the Capitalist Market System. The final era of money, the one that we are in right now, is the era of electronic money.

Initially, all known early civilizations started out using commodity-based economies. The biggest example that I remember from the book is the Aztecs using Cacao beans as currency. They would organize it into sacks of 24,000 beans or so. Since that would be really heavy and hard to count, they might use Woven Capes as an equivalent amount.

Once people became familiar with Gold and Silver, they tried to base their economies on that. Coins were first minted in a place in the Mediterranean called Lydia. Lydia isn’t really known for much else than starting the ideas of coins. There is a famous king known as Croesus who is known for being rich and for losing to the Persians. When coins were primarily used as currency, nations and empires kept going after other Treasuries to fuel their economies. Gold was seen as money and wealth wrapped up in one neat package. Eventually came the Roman Empire, and they collapsed in a tragic and much-studied fashion. Money played an integral role in that collapse, causing the citizens to revolt and prefer the Barbarian Hordes. After the fall of Rome came the Dark Ages where a Commodity-based economy became the standard in Europe for a millennium.

Now we get to the Paper-based money. I know that I said it mainly focused on Banks and the Capitalist Market System, but Paper-based money plays an important role in that regard. With the rise of the Knights Templar as bankers to the Pope and the Crusades, and their tragic fall due to the Greed of a French King the idea of banking was developed. The idea of having a Bill of Exchange was a huge deal back then since it wasn’t as easy to loot it as a massive pile of coins. It also allowed for loans to be made and profits on that money to be collected. The Medici and other Banking Families found a way for their Souls to be saved even though they practiced Usury.

Now you may be saying, “didn’t China have paper back in 200 CE or something?” You are correct in that, but the author makes a distinction between China’s economy and European nations of the time. China wanted to monopolize on the supply of Gold and Silver and so never traded that. Whenever a merchant came to China, they had to exchange their Gold and Silver for an equivalent amount of Paper Money.

Surprisingly, The United States was the country that popularized Paper money and made it more respectable. This was due to the fact that The United States didn’t get their money from Britain, so they were forced to come up with something that would work with what they had. The US originally based their money on the Spanish Unit of Currency, since it was more available. Once they had the means, the US developed their own money at the Mint. The US was also one of the first countries to decimalize their money. Think back to Britain again. Shillings, Farthings, Pounds Sterling, Crowns, what the heck is all of that? Then they had weird exchanges like they were living in the Harry Potter universe or something. Then in 1971 they finally saw the light and made their money make sense. Although, I am still waiting for the Metric System to become popularized here. Probably won’t happen in my lifetime though.

The problem with paper money was explored several times in history. It is certainly convenient to carry, but without the backing of a Government, paper is merely paper. You can print it forever and devalue the currency so much that you get hyperinflation. That is why Paper Money was generally backed by specie, Gold or Silver that could be exchanged at any time. Then came the 1970s and Richard Nixon. He decided to float the Currency against other Currencies, making ours a Fiat system.

Eventually, people developed Credit Cards and telecommunications networks, ushering in the Electronic Era of Money. The author doesn’t really have too much to say on that. Amazon hadn’t been invented yet and eBay wasn’t a thing at the time.

This book was printed in 1997, making it slightly older than I had expected. When I took the book out, I guess I was hoping for something that was at least printed in the new millennium, but it doesn’t really take that much away from the book. It is still very informative and quite interesting. ( )

I saw this book while browsing at the library and thought it might be interesting. It is. I already knew a bit about the subject, although I didn't know that The Wizard of Oz was a satire about the debate on what money should be based upon. Apparently, Baum supported basing the dollar on both gold and silver. His character Dorothy represented a Populist orator, Leslie Kelsey (AKA the Kansas Tornado). Oz itself comes from the abbreviation for ounce, which measures the precious metals. The Scarecrow represents the American Farmer. The Tin Woodsman is the American factory worker. The Cowardly Lion is William Jennings Bryan. Dorothy's trek along the yellow (gold) brick road to Oz is a recreation of the 1894 march of unemployed men led by Jacob S. Coxey to demand another public issue of greenbacks (paper money) and more work for common people....etc.

The final chapter of The History of Money covers electronic money and how it would (this was published in 1997) supplant coins and paper. True. The book doesn't, however, go much into what modern money is based upon (which is complicated), but it is still an interesting and informative read.
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Written at an extremely low level and not actually a history of money. ( )

This was an excellent book chock full of information and ideas I had never really given much thought to before. The author's project was ambitious -- cover money around the world from its invention up to the present day -- and, impressively, he delivered, and without being too inclusive or long-winded.

I think this book was kind of dated, though. It was published in 1997 and a lot has changed in the past twelve years, what with online shopping and banking and so on becoming so big and so on. I wish the author would publish a second edition, updated to the present day. But times are changing so fast anyway, probably a second edition would be outdated within a year or two. ( )

As anticipated, “the” history of money is quite the story. From extracting hapless villager hearts to pay off the local deity, to dispersing immaterial numerical bits to win crap off Ebay, this is a most interesting development. Weatherford maintains an identifiable structure of three monetary phases, while filling the narrative with any number of fascinating anecdotes. The Spanish/Mexican Peso was the primary currency of the fledgling US?!? That grants an ironic precedent to my statement last year that the Dollar is the new Peso of the world. The author notes the perfect, though somewhat disturbing logic to the later addition/replacement of “In God We Trust” on our buck (indeed the nickname for deer skins which previously represented an important monetary vehicle for the early settlers). In short, great Trivial Pursuit factoids, but also a fun read.

At least until the last “Phase.” Comparatively this part seems a bit tepid as the author expounds upon the digital age. Necessary as this is to his thesis, the contemporaniety of this portion makes much of this segment seem somewhat typical and incongruously speculative in relation to the fairly bizarre, earlier development of monetary history. In fact, the baseless nature of electronic “money” might be read as the opposite of ye olde silver coinage, cowrie shells, and bowls of goat milk utilized to buy whatever. Or at least, if I read this correctly, this is the next great transmogrification into the as-yet unknown.

Perhaps it’s his concluding pages that bummed me out a bit. Here the focus is on the cadre of “young, single, male” currency traders whose rash, loosely-informed guesswork controls global monetary valuations more than any other production or governmental factors (circa 1997 anyway). Whether this is overstated or not, it certainly seems to tie into our current situation. Can’t wait for the ensuing unknown… ( )