James Kelman's newest comprehensive guide and reference source is an excellent way to study the history of banking & finance. Beginning with the earliest forms of banking in Mesopotamia and Greece and covering the more recent banking crises of the 20th & 21st Centuries, this easy-to-read guide will help you better understand the role that banking and global finances play in our lives.

Professor Bodenhorn reveals how America was served by an efficient system of financial intermediaries by the mid-nineteenth century.

In this extensive history of U.S. monetary policy, Richard H. Timberlake chronicles the intellectual, political, and economic developments that prompted the use of central banking institutions to regulate the monetary systems. After describing the constitutional principles that the Founding Fathers laid down to prevent state and federal governments from printing money. Timberlake shows how the First and Second Banks of the United States gradually assumed the central banking powers that were originally denied them. Drawing on congressional debates, government documents, and other primary sources, he analyses the origins and constitutionality of the greenbacks and examines the evolution of clearinghouse associations as private lenders of last resort. He completes this history with a study of the legislation that fundamentally changed the power and scope of the Federal Reserve System—the Banking Act of 1935 and the Monetary Control Act of 1980. Writing in nontechnical language, Timberlake demystifies two centuries of monetary policy. He concludes that central banking has been largely a series of politically inspired government-serving actions that have burdened the private economy.

This 2005 treatment compares the central banks of Britain and the United States.

Generally, books addressing the early history of African American banks have done so either within the larger construct of African American business history and economic development, or as a starting point to explore current issues related to financial services. Focused considerations of these early institutions and their founders have been relatively rare and somewhat scattered. This publication seeks to address this issue.