Understanding cash, currencies and the financial system is vital for making sense of what is going on in our world, especially now.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, money has rarely been out of the headlines. Central banks have launched extraordinary policies, like quantitative easing or negative interest rates. New means of payment, like Bitcoin and Apple Pay, are changing how we interact with money and how governments and corporations keep track of our spending. Radical politicians in the US and UK are urging us to transform our financial system and make it the servant of social justice.

Money in One Lesson will cut through the confusion. While we are all familiar with money in our everyday lives, few of us would be able to explain exactly what it is or how it works. In a slim volume of roughly 180 pages, Money in One Lesson will answer the most important questions and clarify for the reader what money is and how it shapes our societies. It will provide a basic understanding of public spending, interest rates and financial markets.

Society creates money, but money also creates society. During the American Civil War, the relatively stable ‘greenback’ money of the north beat the inflation-prone cotton-backed ‘greyback’ of the south. The Euro’s architects were as much motivated by their desire to unite and integrate the EU’s nations into a single whole as they were by economic logic. Drawing on examples and anecdotes from our current environment and from history, Money in One Lesson will demystify the world of finance and explain how societies, both past and present, are intertwined with the economy.