A Chronicle of American Numismatic History
Richard Doty's new "America's Money, America's Story" tells of our nation's struggles, creativity, resilience and triumphs
Americans today know a bit about hard times and we've seen our share of financial turmoil. Some of us are old enough to remember the Great Depression of the 1930s. Dr, Doty recounts the financial struggle that Americans have undertaken from our earliest colonial days -- the struggle to import, adapt, manufacture, and spread money. A great nation grew out of those efforts and over the years we've tackled tough economic times with some surprising and innovative forms of legal (and illegal) tender.
In 224 pages, Doty, the senior curator of numismatics at the Smithsonian Institution, covers American money from beaver pelts and tobacco plugs of early New England to the gold boom of the 1 850s, to the Federal Reserve currency of today. He shows us everything from copper "Hard Times" tokens to Civil War substitutes for the common cent, privately made gold coins, and money made from clamshells, leather, wood, rubber, or whatever it took to move our economy forward. To order, contact Whitman Books online.