Edwin Kemmerer, "The Money Doctor", wrote this excellent approach to the Gold Standard to be understood for any undergraduate student. The simplicity and the scope of the analysis makes it a necessary part of the economic historian's book collection. With the experience Mr. Kemmerer had teaching and researching at Princeton University, as well as being an advisor of many goverments from the beginning of this century until his last days, he has the simpliest realistic examples to explain the different Gold Standard epochs.

Going through the Gold Exchange Standard, the Gold Bullion Standard and the Bretton Woods System he surveys quickly, but deeply, the way these monetary systems worked and how they died.

As a conclusion, Edwin Kemmerer's book should be considered a classical on Gold Standard, next to Barry Eichengreen's books. The simplicity of the book and the variety of themes it describes makes it an excellent buy.

This is the assisted autobiography of the man who almost singlehandedly built up the energy conglomerate that is known as Royal Dutch/Shell. No doubt aided very much by Mr. Naylor's crafty pen, this book reads as an adventure novel and business guide at the same time. Mr. Deterding gets a platform to tell his story, which turns out to be slightly short on personal detail (there is exactly one mention of a wife, even though he got married four times) and somewhat longer on the history of his business, though for a thorough discourse on the early history of RD/Shell I'd refer the reader elsewhere.

The power of this book lies in the apparant disclosure of this mans character. Much a child of his time, it can't be denied he also was a pretty nasty individual in some of his views. He does mention his admiration for Mussolini, who he sees as a pretty efficient businessman, but also in other respects he sounds as a rightwing gung-ho type of person, which echoes most in the harrowing quote near the end of his story:

"If I were dictator of the world, and please Mr Printer, put this in large type, I'D SHOOT ALL IDLERS ON SIGHT"

There 's quite a few other opinions of this sort which make it not surprising he was seen as the foremost incarnation of evil capitalism in the early thirties, however, he does make some points which portray him as a clever and resourceful (business) man, with some remarkable traits indeed, and discarding him on the scrapheap of history solely for the reason that he was a vile man would do him nor history right.

Again, he doesn't tell all, but for lack of other, this is quite an indispensible resource for those interested in this person, or in the political economic history of the 20th century either. It is a pity that there are very few other monographies on Deterding, (even less so in English) and I wouldn't recommend this book as a starting point, but if one's interested, you can't do without it.