The Nobel Prize–winning economist explains how value is created, and how that affects everything from your paycheck to global markets. One of the leading figures of the Chicago school of economics that rejected the theories of John Maynard Keynes offers a journey through history to illustrate the importance of understanding monetary economics, and how monetary theory can ignite or deepen inflation. With anecdotes revealing the far-reaching consequences...

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) was one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century. He was professor of economics at Harvard University and served as U.S. ambassador to India during the Kennedy administration. He wrote more than fifty books, including American Capitalism, The Affluent Society, and The New Industrial State (Princeton). Money is nothing more than what is commonly exchanged for goods or services, so why has understanding...

"Before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods-that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors-which lives on in full force to this day. So says anthropologist David Graeber in a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom....

"The best-selling author of Naked Statistics and Naked Economics explores the colorful world of money and banking to answer such questions as how money creation is used to counter financial crises, why the shared European currency has caused so much trouble and how Bitcoin will impact the future." --

"The age of paper dollars and metal coins is coming to a close. In The End of Money, David Wolman introduces the people, technologies, and trends powering this shakeup, taking us to hotspots of the cashless revolution. He zooms from the cash-strapped slums of Delhi, to the tech-obsessed streets of Tokyo, to London to hobnob with digital cash gurus. Then it's on to Reykjavik, where Icelanders are about to kill their national currency; Washington, to...

"From the lost empires of the Sahara to today's frenzied global gold rush, a blazing exploration of the human love affair with gold by the award-winning author of Diamond. Since the 2008 financial crisis, the price of gold has skyrocketed--in three years more than doubling from $800 an ounce to $1900. This massive spike kicked off an unprecedented global gold-mining and exploration boom, much bigger than the Gold Rush of the 1800s. In Gold, acclaimed...

A history of money, beginning with the barter system in ancient times, to the first use of coins and paper money, to the development of modern monetary systems.

An introduction to currency covers the history of money around the world, minting coins and printing paper money, and how governments manage a country's currency.