One title on the list:A Nation of CounterfeitersRead about another title on Kamensky's list.
by Stephen Mihm
Harvard, 2007
Between the Revolutionary era, when the Continental was America's currency, and the Civil War, which brought us the greenback, the U.S. had no national paper currency. Chartered banks and their privately issued notes proliferated. The babel of competing bills created fertile ground for counterfeits, which sprang up like mushrooms. By the 1850s, thousands of different breeds of paper passed as American money. In "A Nation of Counterfeiters," Stephen Mihm's relentless sleuthing and lively prose reanimate a world in which every dollar had to be carefully read. This rogues gallery of forgers, coin-shavers and engravers-gone-bad holds up a funhouse mirror to the entrepreneurial face of American money-making.
The Page 69 Test: A Nation of Counterfeiters.
--Marshal Zeringue
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