Using paper money in the modern United States is generally a painless process. One pays with a bill, the cashier provides change, and both parties go about their lives with little further thought. But as Joshua R. Greenberg shows in the excellent Bank Notes and Shinplasters: The Rage for Paper Money in the Early Republic, this was not always the case. Americans in the young nation remained constantly vigilant of the bills they used for daily transactions. The quality of the paper, the images on the front, even the dress and demeanor of the person offering the bill could all provide evidence as to the note’s trustworthiness. One wrong move and someone could be left holding money not worth the paper upon which it was printed. As Greenberg masterfully illustrates throughout the work, “not every early republic paper money transaction required an encyclopedic knowledge of bank note quality and regulatory guidelines, but the public had to be prepared because any transaction might” (18). Americans wielded an impressive set of interpretive skills during this period, abilities that modern Americans simply no longer have.

Greenberg breaks the book into three parts, each consisting of two chapters. The first section, entitled “Circulation,” illustrates how paper money made its way into the economy and how people used these bills. In the early republic, paper money came primarily from private businesses. Banks issued bank notes that could theoretically be exchanged for gold or silver, and other businesses sometimes issued their own money called “shinplasters” to meet the community’s monetary needs. In practice, notes generally traded for less than their face value, or, in the parlance of the time, were “discounted.” Nobody could be familiar with the literally thousands of note types circulating throughout the nation, so people carefully sized up the bills and their owners before committing to a transaction.

The second section, entitled “Material Culture,” focuses on the physical nature of the bills themselves and how Americans interacted with them. None of these bank notes were legal tender, so people could choose whether to accept them. Thus, people turned to the bills themselves for signs of trustworthiness. Banks knew this, so they worked hard to inspire confidence by printing on good paper, using sentimental imagery, and writing various kinds of promises that the note was good. As Greenberg shows, people also actively engaged with the money as material objects. For example, someone might cut a one-dollar note in half to meet a fifty-cent obligation, or they might write on the back of a bill that it was for their rent. The politically active might scrawl slogans from their favorite candidate on the paper. In any case, people took the ostensibly impersonal medium of cash and personalized it to their own ends.

The final section, entitled “Political Economy,” describes how money connected people to politics and how the federal government banished this monetary order during the Civil War. While one’s views of money influenced their politics, this did not always lock them into a specific party. Some began to call for federally issued, legal tender paper money as early as the 1830s, but these plans did not come to fruition until the Civil War. The financial crisis that accompanied the conflict spurred the federal government to issue “greenbacks” and national bank notes. Only greenbacks were legal tender, but both came from the federal government, were accepted for most taxes, were largely uniform, and mostly traded at face value. Ultimately, this new federally backed monetary regime supplanted its predecessor, and the skills Americans had used for decades to decipher money went with it.

Greenberg’s work sits at the intersection of two major historiographical fields: the new histories of capitalism and the history of money. It shares the former’s concern with lived experience, change over time, and the cultural meanings of economic exchange. It turns toward the latter in the final section by focusing not only on how the state shapes the monetary regime but also how the government has to operate within socially acceptable parameters. Although the text provides a good summary of how paper money actually worked and how the federal government came to reshape the money supply during the Civil War, the book’s primary historiographical contribution lies in the middle section. In particular, Greenberg’s focus on the physical nature of the bills themselves, as well as how people actively interacted with these notes as material objects, provides fresh insight into how Americans at the time understood and used money. They literally could not afford to treat paper money as impersonal. People had to learn and hone their skills and knowledge in ways that remain quite foreign to most modern Americans.

The text draws from a wide range of sources. Greenberg shows a mastery of the important historiographical texts as well as an impressive reading across primary sources including newspaper articles, plays, songs, and the notes themselves. By focusing on paper money’s material aspect in new ways, Greenberg unlocks novel insights into the early republic’s economy and how people navigated it. Further, he weaves in analyses of the racial, class, and gender dynamics that underlaid this system and how the monetary regime could either reinforce or undermine traditional hierarchies. For instance, before the Civil War, a five-dollar bill in the hands of a wealthy white factory owner was valued differently than the same bill in the hands of an enslaved African American woman. After the Civil War, however, the value of the money itself no longer depended upon who was using it.

Bank Notes and Shinplasters is an excellent and important text. Well written and immensely engaging, the work succeeds in emphasizing the material culture of paper money and how people wielded skills to interpret their cash. Scholars interested in money, material culture, and capitalism in the early republic will find this text helpful in expanding their understanding of the young United States’ economy.