A History of Money

John F. Chown's 1994 scholarly history traces money from Charlemagne's monetary reform through the end of the Silver Wars in 1896, with a summary of the twentieth century. The central value is that most modern monetary problems have clear historical precedents — and Chown, a tax advisor and monetary historian, is a reliable and authoritative guide through a millennium of coinage, credit, banking, and paper money. The honest caveat is accessibility: this is dense academic writing published by Routledge and aimed squarely at specialists and serious economic historians. General readers looking for a popular narrative history of money will find it heavy going. For graduate students, economic historians, or serious finance enthusiasts willing to work through the detail, it offers a genuinely comprehensive treatment of a long-neglected subject.