Anna Kassulke provides a penetrating scrutiny of the most globally important concept of our time: money. Dr. Kassulke has gathered together a rich selection of money stories and characters, and shows how they function in terms of both our social relations as well as our psychological and cognitive makeup.

Money was invented when human beings minted coins. Then we printed paper money, and now we have e-cash. Or so the fiction of money's origins would have it. Dr. Kassulke unveils the purely mythological status money has in contemporary Western societies. She presents a wide range of...