Where the buck never stops

It is a seductive idea to assess ‘the invention of America’ through the history of the dollar, for no other country’s conception of itself is so intrinsically bound to its currency. The biggest brand in the world, from its introduction the dollar has financed capitalism and conflict in equal measure. In the process it has shaped the American psyche.

Goodwin’s narrative, which elegantly recounts the difficulties preceding its arrival as an instrument of global hegemony, establishes that from the beginning the dollar was symbolic of – and a receptacle for – the aspirations of the American people.

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This will come as little surprise to those who equate Americans with vulgar displays of wealth. But rather than simply being an engine of ostentation the dollar has been the vehicle – the ‘stored possibility’ – through which the two sides of the American character, pragmatist and dreamer, have been fulfilled.