Rothbard's History of Money and Banking (US), now in hardcover
Many readers hoped that the Mises Institute would publish A History of Money and Banking in the United States in hardcover; here it is for $25 (510 pages!).
Joseph Salerno in his introduction calls this book the Austrian alternative and answer to Friedman and Schwartz. Rothbard gives us more than a recitation of the movement of aggregates; here we have the dramatic and very human story of monetary upheavals that serve as a backdrop to critical turning points in American history. In fact, Rothbard argues that you cannot understand many of these episodes without examining their monetary roots.
In a complete revision of the standard account, Rothbard traces inflations, banking panics, and money meltdowns from the Colonial Period through the mid-20th century to show how government's systematic war on sound money is the hidden force behind nearly all major economic calamities in American history. Never has the story of money and banking been told with such rhetorical power and theoretical vigor.
Here is how this book came to be. Rothbard died in 1995, leaving many people to wish that he had written a historical treatise on this topic. But the archives assisted: Rothbard had in fact left several large manuscripts dedicated to American banking history. In the course of his career, meanwhile, he had published other pieces along the same lines, but they appeared in venues not readily accessible.
Given the desperate need for a single volume that covers the topic, the Mises Institute put together this thrilling book. So seamless is the style and argument, and comprehensive is coverage, that it might as well have been written in exactly this format. The hardcover makes it particular valuable for classroom use.
