*The Gold Standard at the Turn of the Twentieth Century* from Marginal Revolution by Tyler Cowen

The author is Steven Bryan, a historian, and the subtitle is Rising Powers, Global Money, and the Age of Empire. This book offers a great deal of previous unpresented information on the operation of the gold standard in Japan, Russia, Turkey, and Argentina, based on original rather than secondary sources. Here is a summary paragraph at the end of the book: The connection between nineteenth-century great power politics, empire building, and militarism and the gold standard was obscured after World War I in the rush to reinstate the form of the gold standard while ignoring its substance and the varied rationales and motivations that had supported it. Despite the rose-colored hues of nostalgia that flourished after the war, the gold standard did not exist in some magical land separate from the rest of the late nineteenth-century world. For better or worse, the gold standard was as much a part of the age of empire as it was of the age of industry.

Read the full MR post here.