A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States | 
 enlarge | Author: Stephen Mihm
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Rating:  62 reviews
Sales Rank: 97032
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 472
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.5
ISBN: 0674026578
Dewey Decimal Number: 332.1097309034
EAN: 9780674026575
ASIN: 0674026578
Publication Date: September 15, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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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)
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| Customer Reviews: Read 57 more reviews...
An Economic World I Didn't Realize Existed November 28, 2008
Colleen McMahon (Atlanta, GA)
We take currency for granted. It's pieces of paper and chunks of metal and we engage in a collective act of faith when we all join in believing it's worth $5.00 or 5 cents or whatever it says on it. We take on faith that those pieces of paper and chunks of metal are backed by our government.
But in the United States it was not always that way. In the 18th and 19th century, banks around the nation issued their own currency to represent the stock of precious metal they actually had on hand. People had to make their own decision whether to engage in the act of faith that a particular piece of paper meant a particular bank's word was good. On top of that, with thousands of competing currency designs circulating, counterfeiters flourished. The effect of all of this on the market, the economy and growth of the US and our very form of government makes for a more fascinating story than I expected, approaching a book of economic history.
By focusing on the people who were gaming the system, the counterfeiters, author Stephen Mihm gives an interesting twist to what could be a very dry topic. Lively personalities appear, who, while largely forgotten now, had tremendous influence on the growth of the US economy in the first half of the 19th century.
Mihm has accomplished an impressive feat here, writing both a well-researched dissertation on a less-studied topic, and then turning it into a book that is readable for an interested layperson. I enjoyed this book.
Amazing Where How Our Money Evolved November 26, 2008
Bob Reece (Frederick, CO USA)
Do you know that why President Lincoln established the Secret Service? It wasn't to protect him but to protect the country's currency. It is still the main purpose of the Secret Service today, although they are now also responsible to protect the president.
Understanding where our money came from and how it evolved to what it is today is a most fascinating account. At one time, almost every bank issued its own currency within the different states. Trying to track that money, use it, and account for it was a nightmare.
Something had to be done about it and you learn all about that in A Nation of Counterfeiters. The next time you pull a $5.00 bill from your purse or wallet, you'll have a much deeper appreciation of what it really means.
Insightful October 23, 2008
Yalensian
The parallels aren't exact, but common themes run from the period between the Revolution and the Civil War to the present: trust and distrust in finance, questions about government's proper role (including issues like regulation), the nature of the free market, the house-of-cards element of our economy. In highlighting how those themes and others played out during the United States' first seventy years, Stephen Mihm also opens a window into our current financial situation. I won't call this book indispensable, but it is enjoyable (despite some patches of dry, academic writing) and insightful, into both the past and the present.
Remarkable View of Another Crazy Time In Our Nation's Financial History October 16, 2008
Doug - Haydn Fan (California)
Full to the brim with endless examples of early 19th century Americana, this book falls into a relatively rare group of works about the nation's fiscal policies and the nature of frontier banking even an average reader can approach. In these days of failing major banks it's rather charming to note how trust and deception regarding the issuance of money and the establishing of secure credit were always constants, ongoing fundamentals to any country's economic well being!
The author does not write as well as might be wished, and tend to dwell much to long on the same examples. The book also needs tightening up, and most importantly - break up the huge central chapter.
That said, this is a good book and one anyone interested in the beginnings of our banking might well peruse with profit of a different kind than the many and various fly by night operators who added to the color of early Americana at the dawn of our Republic.
A History Of The Value Of The Dollar September 20, 2008
Alan Beggerow (Rock Falls, IL USA)
For the first hundred years of our nation's existence there was no federally printed or controlled money. Regional banks printed money, in a variety of styles, some of it very cheaply printed. Not only regional banks printed money. It was so easily done as to be an encouragement for counterfeiting.
This book tells of those counterfeiters, and how some of the counterfeit money actually became to be regarded as more valuable than money printed by banks. In the end, the author makes the point that all paper money is essentially a confidence game. What makes it valuable is not what backs it, as the U.S. dollar no longer has precious metals backing it. It is the confidence of the marketplace and of people in the money that makes it valuable.
A great book. Recommended!
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