“Sklansky weaves a compelling narrative. Highly recommended.”

Choice

“Sovereign of the Market is an exemplary work of intellectual history in its deepening engagement with new histories of capitalism. Sklansky has written a book that effectively draws upon methodological turns—social, cultural, and financial—in a way that challenges us to rethink the periodization and politics of the money-question in America. It is more than a timely and persuasive intervention in the current debates over the history of capitalism and financialization; it is a masterful and memorable work of history in itself.”

Jean-Christophe Agnew, Yale University

“Elegantly conceived and composed, Sklansky’s Sovereign of the Market brilliantly renders two centuries of early American currency debates into dramatic encounters between antagonists who struggled over the question, ‘who rules?’ These were matters not merely economic but profoundly political and social—indeed, when all is said and done, a medium of class struggle. No one can read this clear, penetrating account without recognizing, painfully, how much a century’s neglect of the money question has disabled us in understanding the rise of today’s financialized capitalism.”

Howard Brick, Louis Evans Professor of History, University of Michigan