The book is about the financial trouble that fiat (e.g.,paper) money created in France during the revolutionary years. It also states clearly that the people didn't learn enough from a lesson they had 70 years early.

If you read this historical account you will very often wonder: 'Hey sounds familiar to me...'. Too bad - or?

Fiat Money Inflation in France is as much about irrational human behavior as it is about financial crises and runaway inflation. White describes a dissillusioned public who, under the influence of increasingly self-serving public officials and orators, accepted more and more assignant printings even though the perils of such printings had been documented throughout history and were then blatantly obvious right before there eyes.

White presented this analysis of the runaway inflation in France to dissuade the US Government of printing its own paper money. He was successful.

A book worth reading.

A clear presentation of a governments desparate move using cheap inflated paper money to pay off old debts and its effects on france around 1790. This is not a dynamic novel, but mind bombs go off as the author hits the chain of events that occurred when money is inflated, and is backed only by only a promise to pay the debt it represents. The French find themselves mired in a cycle of ever increasing difficulty to pay that debt off. Although it is not a novel and at times a bit dry, you will definitely be talking to your friends and family about what this author has to say and comparing it to what you see happening now.

Any true student of Western Civilization will delight in this incisive treatment of perhaps the most fundamental theme of Western culture, viz. the emergence of rationality as a methodology from within the context of social and political (Christian) mysticism and dogma. Although abundant and conspicuous in its scholarship, this work is energetic, clear, and easy in style, and White is sensitive and optimistic in his handling of what could easily have been a "bashing" session. The work is rich, thought-provoking, and fulfilling intellectually, and yet fun to read. It is one of those rare, mind-expanding experiences that true free thinkers relish.