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The E-Sylum: Volume 6, Number 3, January 19, 2003, Article 6 NEW BOOK: GREENBACK The January 9, 2003 issue of the Christian Science Monitor published a review of a new book, "Greenback: The Almighty Dollar and the Invention of America" by Jason Goodwin, published Henry Holt, 321 pp., $26. "The billions of electronic dollars zipping from computer to computer each day provoke an interesting question: What really is an American dollar? British author and journalist Jason Goodwin takes a crack at the answer with "Greenback," a biography of the buck that traces it from native American wampum to today's almighty bill. It is a riveting story with a quirky cast of early American characters that includes a few of the Founding Fathers, inventors, counterfeiters, secret agents, bankers, and swindlers, each placing their thumbprint on the young country's currency and monetary system, whether they knew it or not." For the full review, see: http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0109/p17s01-bogn.html From Publishers Weekly (published on Amazon.com, where the book is offered for $18.20): "After a strong start, this history of American money loses its thread and ends up as an entertaining collection of trivia, personality profiles and vignettes rather than the compelling narrative promised in its opening. Still, Goodwin's flair for a colorful tale makes for rich reading, covering such odds and ends as a brothel in the Treasury Department, a prayer vigil over banking deposits, exploding printing presses and even a counterfeit scheme run from behind prison bars. Goodwin (Lords of the Horizons) makes some excellent points about the role of paper money in early U.S. history-it was the earliest symbol of the new country; it helped push colonists West; it even helped familiarize Americans with their native artists-but the significance of the stories he's chosen to include isn't always clear. After presenting a single national currency as one of the holy grails of early American banking, for instance, he glosses over the moment it finally arrives, a true turning point in American financial history. Goodwin's position as a foreign observer (he is an English journalist) occasionally trips him up: no one in America, for example, says "that will be four dollars thirty six." The more I learn about numismatic history, the less surprised I am to read about various scandals. Somehow, I think I would have remembered reading about a brothel in the Treasury Department. Unless it's something new, perhaps staffed by holdover interns from the Clinton Administration... Alas, according to another Amazon reviewer, the book has no footnotes or endnotes. Does anyone know of a source for the Treasury brothel story? Perhaps he's referring to the Spencer Clark scandals. From an earlier review of the book in The New York Times, December 29, 2002: "But once in motion, the dollar rewarded fellow raconteurs like Spencer Morton Clark, who ran the currency bureau during the Civil War era like a personal harem, and tried to slip his own face onto a five-cent bill. Goodwin observes, with typical wry amusement, ''Queer things had turned up on dollar bills in the past, from Santa Claus to the Delaware rat, but nothing to match the appearance, on a U.S. note, of a bankrupt sex pest under investigation for embezzlement and fraud.'' Benny Bolin wrote a good article on Clark, originally published in Paper Money, the journal of the Society of Paper Money Collectors. It has since been posted to the web: http://www.fractionalnotes.com/spencerclarkarticle.htm "Due to the war and the subsequent shortage of available male workers, it became a necessity for a large number of women to be hired to work in the printing department. This was a new and radical idea in the workplace. The private bank note companies used this new idea, especially the fact that a large number of women were employed at night, to raise charges against the bureau. Charges of fraud and promiscuity rocked the Treasury Department. Reports of drinking, orgies and required sexual favors to keep jobs were numerous. It was widely reported that the printing bureau had been converted into a place for debauchery and drinking, the very recital of which is impossible without violating decency." Wayne Homren, Editor The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org. To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@coinlibrary.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum | |
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