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by: Stephen Mihm List Price: $19.95 Amazon.com's Price: $13.57 You Save: $6.38 (32%) as of 09/06/2010 21:23 EDT Used Price: $8.78 Third Party New Price: $10.00 Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 973 EAN: 9780674032446 ISBN: 0674032446 Label: Harvard University Press Manufacturer: Harvard University Press Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 480 Publication Date: May 01, 2009 Publisher: Harvard University Press Studio: Harvard University Press Features: ISBN13: 9780674032446 Condition: New Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed Related Items: Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market Born Losers: A History of Failure in America The Exchange Artist: A Tale of High-Flying Speculation and America's First Banking Collapse Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic see more Alternate Versions: Click to Display Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Product Description: Listen to a short interview with Stephen Mihm Host: Chris Gondek | Producer: Heron & Crane Few of us question the slips of green paper that come and go in our purses, pockets, and wallets. Yet confidence in the money supply is a recent phenomenon: prior to the Civil War, the United States did not have a single, national currency. Instead, countless banks issued paper money in a bewildering variety of denominations and designs--more than ten thousand different kinds by 1860. Counterfeiters flourished amid this anarchy, putting vast quantities of bogus bills into circulation. Their success, Stephen Mihm reveals, is more than an entertaining tale of criminal enterprise: it is the story of the rise of a country defined by a freewheeling brand of capitalism over which the federal government exercised little control. It was an era when responsibility for the country's currency remained in the hands of capitalists for whom "making money" was as much a literal as a figurative undertaking. Mihm's witty tale brims with colorful characters: shady bankers, corrupt cops, charismatic criminals, and brilliant engravers. Based on prodigious research, it ranges far and wide, from New York City's criminal underworld to the gold fields of California and the battlefields of the Civil War. We learn how the federal government issued greenbacks for the first time and began dismantling the older monetary system and the counterfeit economy it sustained. A Nation of Counterfeiters is a trailblazing work of history, one that casts the country's capitalist roots in a startling new light. Readers will recognize the same get-rich-quick spirit that lives on in the speculative bubbles and confidence games of the twenty-first century. (20070921) Customer Reviews Average Rating: Rating: - Interesting but not a page turner Most Americans probably don't give a thought to exactly how the paper bills we carry around every day came in to existence. I always assumed that our paper money came in to existence shortly after the Revolution. As Stephen Mihm's book explains, that view is far from the reality. Mihm's book covers a very interesting time period from the Revolutionary period to the Civil War. Mihm shows that the rise of what we now know as our money didn't occur until the Civil War, as the North looked for ways to ... Read More Rating: - Show me the money This seems to be two very different books, both interesting. The first six chapters cover the period from 1790 to the Civil War with little-known material gathered from primary sources. The remainder of the book, including the prologue and epilogue, discuss the transition to a national paper currency that began in 1861. In this part, the author reinterprets familiar material. It seems more like a cultural economic essay than a history. Not only is the style distinct, but we are reintroduced to characters ... Read More Rating: - A Cure For Microhistory There's been a trend going on, perhaps too long, to take a look at a very specific, narrow moment in history and dramatically build the foundation of civilization upon it. After a lot of hand-waving and breathlessness, the reader is left wondering what the big deal was all about. This book is a cure for that, illuminating and important aspect of history which, though now small, is little known or understood. This country began in fairly chaotic, happenstance ways, and despite the apparent sophistication ... Read More Rating: - History of Money in the US, a very good read The Fed, Congress printing money like it was toilet paper, that's today. A hundred and fifty years ago, banks issued their own currency, and things were crazy then, too. A fascinating read about the history of money in the U.S. - maybe even suggesting how we got into the debacle we're in today. Rating: - Brings counterfeiting to life I'm not a particularly big fan of history books (though I don't dislike them affirmatively), but this one caught my eye because of its tangential relevance to one of the law courses that I teach on Constitutional Law. The history of money printing in the different states, which figures in the opportunity for early counterfeiters to prosper, helped me understand better the chaos of the pre-Constitution era, when the country was governed under the Articles of Confederation. Prof. Mihm writes well, and the stories of counterfeiters ... Read More see more