Why read Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution?

Book cover of Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution

Book description

Winner of the Louis Gottschalk Prize, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
A Financial Times Best History Book of the Year
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year

Rebecca L. Spang, who revolutionized our understanding of the restaurant, has written a new history of money. It uses one of the…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Timothy Alborn

Author

I love the way this book makes the very old story of the French Revolution new and exciting by telling the parallel story of how so much of the turmoil of that period was etched onto the money that a succession of governments issued.

I learned so much, both from the shifting set of images on French money and the wonderful stories about how a confused populace used this money to the best of their ability, as their paper currency lost both the crowned heads that once adorned it and, in the process, much of its value. Spang ingeniously recounts…

From Timothy's list on the strangeness of money.