This book is a fairly detailed account of the developmental history of our world's financial system. Contrary to the title, the author starts some discussions as far back as the Renaissance (banking), or the Roman empire (currency). Instead of basing the entire book on chronology or geography, the author focuses on the various, interrelated facets of the *global* financial system, with each chapter reviews the history a different dimension. Every relevant economic entity (U.S. Europe, Japan) is included since the topic is of a global nature.

Overall, the book provided a wealth of historical facts and offers some insights into why things developed certain ways. The author attempts to be unbiased with his focus on historical facts, but generally seem to be a proponent of the current financial structure and philosophy (i.e. free trade, paper standard, etc.) For people who are novice in economics and financial history, this is a good primer of background reading. At times, however, it did seem tedious and overly dull with too much non-essential facts. ( )