{"product_id":"the-almighty-dollar-500-years-of-the-worlds-most-powerful-money","title":"The Almighty Dollar: 500 Years of the World's Most Powerful Money","description":"\n\u003ctable align=\"center\" border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"2\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\"\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"productDetailSmallElements\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Quotes\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A lucid work of economic history.\" \n\u003cb\u003e--\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\" \n\u003ci\u003eThe Almighty Dollar\u003c\/i\u003e [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\" \n\u003cb\u003e--Keith Johnson, \u003ci\u003eForeign Policy\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"The history of the dollar is longer and more interesting than people realize. Brendan Greeley, in his \n\u003ci\u003eThe Almighty Dollar\u003c\/i\u003e, provides the ideal guide to understanding the world's most important currency.\" \n\u003cb\u003e--Tyler Cowen, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Great Stagnation \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eAverage Is Over\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\"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! \n\u003ci\u003eThe Almighty Dollar\u003c\/i\u003e is a must for anyone who wants to understand the dollar in today's world.\" \n\u003cb\u003e--David McWilliams, #1 international bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe History of Money: A Story of Humanity\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"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.\" \n\u003cb\u003e--\u003ci\u003eThe Bookworm Sez\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Despite being a brilliant and surprisingly fun read, in writing a history of the dollar Greeley inadvertently gives us a new history of money.\" \n\u003cb\u003e--Mark Blyth, author of \u003ci\u003eInflation: A Guide for Users and Losers\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\"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.\" \n\u003cb\u003e--Evan Osnos, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Haves and Have-Yachts\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\"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.\" \n\u003cb\u003e--William D. Cohan, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003ePower Failure \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eThe Last Tycoons\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\"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.\" \n\u003cb\u003e--Rebecca Spang, author of \u003ci\u003eStuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\"This is a mesmerizing and fascinating book, breathtakingly researched and spectacularly written.\" \n\u003cb\u003e--Harold James, author of \u003ci\u003eSeven Crashes \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eThe End of Globalization\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\"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.\" \n\u003cb\u003e--Seth Rockman, author of \u003ci\u003ePlantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eBiographical Note\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eBrendan Greeley\u003c\/b\u003e has spent twenty years as a journalist, covering economic and monetary policy. He was the US economics editor at the \n\u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e and continues to write a regular column there. Before that, he was a staff writer for \n\u003ci\u003eBloomberg Businessweek\u003c\/i\u003e and \n\u003ci\u003eThe Economist\u003c\/i\u003e, as well as an anchor and correspondent for \n\u003ci\u003eBloomberg TV\u003c\/i\u003e. He has also written for \n\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e, \n\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e, and \n\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal Europe\u003c\/i\u003e, 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublisher Marketing\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eIn this ambitious and groundbreaking history of the dollar, financial journalist and economic scholar Brendan Greeley makes a new argument about the origins of our money--and the people and nations who have surrendered to it.\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e\"Eye-opening, educational, exhaustively reported, and very fun to read.\"--\u003ci\u003eForeign Policy\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAmerica's money is global money--nearly every nation in the world writes international contracts in dollars, and in 2023, central banks around the world held nearly $6.7 trillion in dollar reserves, three times any other currency. Today, the United States' global hegemony rests largely on its ability to produce unlimited treasury bonds that are sold around the world, dollars that supported America's explosive growth in the twentieth century and funded its massive wars in the twenty-first. American power and the American dollar have become synonymous. \n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eYet in this brilliant 500-year history, Brendan Greeley argues that America's sovereignty over the dollar is an illusion--that the dollar had already empowered and destroyed nations long before it washed up on colonial shores, and that no country or king has or can ever truly control it. Reaching back to the dollar's birth as the \n\u003ci\u003etaler\u003c\/i\u003e in the 15th-century silver mines of St. Joachimsthal, Greeley reveals how the dollar first thrived as a commodity for merchants and bankers--a big, silver coin that was trusted around the world, even as the miners who pulled it from the ground had trouble getting paid in that same silver. Greeley traces a captivatingly complex path across time and place, from the industrial collapse at the heart of Spain's 17th-century silver empire, to the birth of American paper dollars in colonial Maryland, 19th-century New Orleans bank failures, and the small town of Hawarden, Iowa, which created its own dollars during the Great Depression. At every surprising turn, Greeley upends assumptions about global currencies and draws out the centuries-old tension between how dollars are manufactured and whom they actually serve. \n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eSingular in its breadth, \n\u003ci\u003eThe Almighty Dollar\u003c\/i\u003e dismantles the myth that America created or has ever truly controlled the dollar. Through meticulous research and vividly rendered stories of merchants, monarchs, and everyday people both past and present, Greeley shows how the dollar became America's greatest export, spawning a vast financial industry that enriches the wealthy, even as the rest of the country's industries suffer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations:\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"italic\"\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/span\u003e 04\/01\/2026 (EAN 9780593138885, Hardcover)\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003c\/table\u003e\n","brand":"Crown Currency","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51496114553110,"sku":"9780593138885","price":38.4,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0857\/9910\/8886\/files\/9780593138885.jpg?v=1783053414","url":"https:\/\/lusper.myshopify.com\/products\/the-almighty-dollar-500-years-of-the-worlds-most-powerful-money","provider":"Lusperbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}