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Book notes: The almighty dollar: 500 years of the world’s most powerful money, by Brendan Greeley

The history of the currency that came to be ‘the dollar’ is the centrepiece in an otherwise confused book

Cover of The almighty dollar, by Brendan Greeley

Brendan Greeley, The almighty dollar: 500 years of the world’s most powerful money, Crown Currency, 2026, 432 pages

Brendan Greeley is a former US economics editor for the Financial Times who decided recently – “against advice and reason” (p 347) – to undertake a PhD in economic history at Princeton University under the supervision of Harold James. The book under review is best thought of as a mash-up of his two careers: one part, and by far the most interesting and convincing, is an excursion

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