More Book Reviews: Good Money

The Freeman from the Foundation for Economic Education published an excellent book review of Good Money: Birmingham Button Makers, the Royal Mint, and the Beginnings of Modern Coinage, 1775–1821 (2008) by George Selgin. The reviewer is George Leef, book review editor of The Freeman.

From the review (February 24, 2010):

"Good Money has an intriguing origin. While reading a book by nineteenth-century British economist William Stanley Jevons, Selgin came across a passage taking issue with Herbert Spencer’s argument that the production of money could be entrusted to the free market. Jevons wrote that in his view “there is nothing less fit to be left to the action of competition than money,” adding that the nation’s experience with privately minted coins in the late eighteenth century “amply confirmed” his opinion. Selgin wanted to know just what that experience was and investigated: 'What I discovered amazed me, not the least because, instead of confirming Jevons’s position, it did just the opposite.'"