Modernity is under constant siege due to our meager understanding of both money and currency. Progress requires reason—and with it order, balance, invention, and labor. Instead, the world pursues progress for self-gratification and with it self-destruction.

In Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Money, author David Barrett pulls from his vast economic expertise to trace the development of currency and money from Rome to the present. Pinpointing the critical decisions that gave rise to and shaped modernity, this remarkable book will alter popular perceptions of money, currency, and political economy by revealing humankind’s inadequacies—as well as its brilliance.

This unique resource examines the fall of Rome, the French and American Revolutions, World War I, the Great Depression, the Marshall Plan, and much more to better understand the critical role currency and money have played for the last two thousand years.

The influence of key players such as Caesar Augustus, Henry VIII, Isaac Newton, Jefferson, Jackson, JP Morgan, FDR, Churchill, Reagan, and a host of others is also on full display to show that humankind’s determined efforts to satisfy its cravings have produced a widespread desire to acquire and consume rather than to construct and produce.