The Almighty Dollar

“A lucid work of economic history.”—Kirkus Reviews

“The Almighty Dollar [is] eye-opening, educational, exhaustively reported, and very fun to read … What is great about this book, beyond Greeley’s unquenchable joy at toying with heavy silver coins on tabletops, is learning exactly how the thing that makes the world go around got made, and gets made, and gets around. I’ll probably read it a third time”—Keith Johnson, Foreign Policy

“The history of the dollar is longer and more interesting than people realize. Brendan Greeley, in his The Almighty Dollar, provides the ideal guide to understanding the world’s most important currency.”—Tyler Cowen, New York Times bestselling author of The Great Stagnation and Average Is Over

“Greeley has done us all a service with this terrific, erudite, breathtaking story of the Almighty U.S. Dollar, which, I now know thanks to his scholarship, came well before the United States itself! The Almighty Dollar is a must for anyone who wants to understand the dollar in today’s world.”—David McWilliams, #1 international bestselling author of The History of Money: A Story of Humanity

“Greeley explains … how banking works, in easy-to-grasp wording, and he makes it relevant to today’s financial world. You’ll learn many painful, blunt truths about your money—you’ve been warned!—and you’ll see why paying attention to current events is essential to your wallet … Start it, stick with it, and you’ll see that it’s worth spending time.”—The Bookworm Sez

“Despite being a brilliant and surprisingly fun read, in writing a history of the dollar Greeley inadvertently gives us a new history of money.”—Mark Blyth, author of Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers

“Brimming with startling details, this is also serious financial history with a conclusion ripe for our unsettled times: rulers and borders come and go, but the dollar has outlasted our illusions of sovereignty and control.”—Evan Osnos, New York Times bestselling author of The Haves and Have-Yachts

“Come for the sweeping—and accessible—history of the dollar and the faith people have put in it. Stay for the delightful cameos about the Saxon miners searching for Joachimsthaler, Maryland bills of credit, Hawarden, Iowa scrip, and Andrew Brimmer’s quest to get the Federal Reserve to allocate credit.”—William D. Cohan, New York Times bestselling author of Power Failure and The Last Tycoons

“This is a reporter’s book of detailed, engaging stories and a historian’s book—telling a tale that is stranger, longer, and more rich with significance than any economist’s fable.”—Rebecca Spang, author of Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution

“This is a mesmerizing and fascinating book, breathtakingly researched and spectacularly written.”—Harold James, author of Seven Crashes and The End of Globalization

“With curiosity, good humor, and a keen eye for human stories, Greeley guides us from centuries-old silver mines to the ongoing machinations of the Federal Reserve Board.”—Seth Rockman, author of Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery

Brendan Greeley has spent twenty years as a journalist, covering economic and monetary policy. He was the US economics editor at the Financial Times and continues to write a regular column there. Before that, he was a staff writer for Bloomberg Businessweek and The Economist, as well as an anchor and correspondent for Bloomberg TV. He has also written for The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal Europe, and received a New York Press Club Award for special event reporting. Brendan graduated from Tulane University with honors in German. He is currently completing a PhD in financial history at Princeton University.

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