The History of Gold and Silver.

The History of Gold and Silver (2000) is a landmark three-volume scholarly anthology edited by Lawrence H. White, Professor of Economics at George Mason University and one of the foremost authorities in the fields of monetary theory and the history of economic thought. Arranged both chronologically and thematically, the set collects primary writings debating the establishment of gold, silver, and bimetallic monetary standards and the various systems devised and implemented to govern the supply and valuation of metallic money — gathering in one place a body of foundational literature that had previously been scattered across centuries of pamphlets, treatises, and parliamentary reports. The volumes span from medieval monetary writing through the great nineteenth-century debates over bimetallism, the gold discoveries in California and Australia, and the transition to modern central banking, assembling contributions from figures including Nassau Senior, John Stuart Mill, W. Stanley Jevons, and Francis Walker, among many others. Reviewed in the Journal of the History of Economic Thought and praised by collectors in the field as impressive in its range over time and topics, the set is regarded as an essential reference for scholars and collectors with a serious interest in the history of monetary economics.