Nicholas Biddle, Image via Wikipedia

I’d never heard of Henry William Brands before reading The Money Men. Despite the late introduction, I suspect that his books will now appear high on my reading list – if they are even able to approach the fascinating quality of this small volume. I do not recall the last time I have read a non-fiction book as voraciously as I have consumed this petite volume – in fact, there are only a few fiction thrillers I can think of which I have consumed in such a compressed fashion.

The Money Men is part of the Atlas Books / W.W. Norton Enterprise series in which “distinguished writers tell the stories of the dynamic innovators and the compelling ideas that create new institutions, new ways of doing business and creating wealth, even new societies.” I will be keeping my eyes open for other volumes in this series as well – hoping that they compare to The Money Men. Especially peaking my interest are Rich Cohen‘s The Record Men: Chess Records and the Birth of Rock & Roll, Tim Parks‘ Medici Money: Banking, Metaphysics, and Art in Fifteen-Century Florence, and James Buchan‘s The Authentic Adam Smith: His Life and Ideas

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But let us move on to a discussion of the book proper. It was published in 2006 and is a small hardcover book with attractive dustcover. Contains a total of 239 pages, but the first 206 contain the main narrative with additional resources filling the remaining pages – endnotes, a list of suggested further reading, and the indexes, etc.

The volume consists of a Prologue and Epilogue and five long chapters in-between. The first chapter entitled “The Aristocracy of Capital” discusses the nature of money and financial policy during and following the American Revolutionary War with a significant emphasis on  Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.

Chapter 2 continues the thread by telling the events that led up to and the consequences of Andrew Jackson’s decision to end the national bank and Nicholas Biddle‘s (Bank President) extreme efforts to ensure the bank’s survival.

Chapter 3 tells the story of the American Civil War and how it changed the face of financial policy – in part as a consequence of a stronger federal government and the needs of wartime finance.

Chapter 4 tells the story of the severe speculation in gold in the post-Civil War era under President Ulysses S. Grant and Chapter 5 concludes the story by recording the times of J.P. Morgan and his significant effects upon finance.

The volume reads in a very easy manner – it is both professional and yet accessible. At the same time, my endeavors to understand financial history and policy are still not complete and while The Money Men has filled in some gaps, it does not provide the complete picture I had hoped to garner. That is not to say anything negative of the volume – for it is not a primer in financial history or policy.

I oftentimes judge the quantity of a volume on several factors, such as:

• How well the volume holds my attention.
• How quickly I read the volume.
• How much new or interesting information the volume provides.
• The clarity with which the author writes.
• The extent to which I underline, highlight, and write comments or other notations into the text.

By all of these measures, H.W. Brand’s The Money Men deserves the highest praise. The one thing I would like to see is an article by Mr. Brands analyzing the recent financial recession (2008 and on) in light of the historical story he weaves in The Money Men.

Brands remains largely neutral throughout his work and yet in the Epilogue I thought I detected an echo of approval for the economic system at the conclusion of his history. Is this a correct interpretation of his Epilogue? If so, could Brands provide us with additional insights or reflections based on recent events?

For anyone who is interested in history, finance, or politics, I would add this to your “must read” list. It is an excellent and fascinating read!

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Just so you know, these are Amazon Kindle ebooks – which means they can be read on a Kindle e-reader, but they don’t have to be! You can read Kindle ebooks on almost any electronic device – e.g. PC, Mac, iPhone, Android, etc.

• Kelly, C. Brian. Best Little Stories from the Civil War: More than 100 True Stories. (History)
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• Stennett, Rob. The End is Now. Zondervan. (End Times/Humor)
• Lee, Emery. Highest Stakes. (Novel/History)
• Weissman, Jerry J. In the Fire: How to Handle Tough Questions When It Counts. FT Press.
• Rue, Nancy. Moms’ Ultimate Guide to the Tween Girl World. Zondervan. (Women/Christian/Parenting)
• Seethaler, Sherry. Lies, Damned Lies, and Science: How to Sort through the Noise around Global Warming, the Latest Health Claims, and Other Scientific Controversies. FT Press (Politics, Science)
• Hess, Edward D. and Goetz, Charles D. So, You Want to Start a Business?: 8 Steps to Take Before Making the Leap.

Tilted Mill’s Mosby’s Confederacy is a combination strategic/tactical wargame (my favorite kind – thus my enjoyment of the Total War series). This game, however, is fairly simplistic compared to epics like Total War – it reminds me of the great classics by W.R. Hutsell (e.g. VGA Civil War Strategy). The game map covers only a relatively small area consisting of several towns and the surrounding areas in which Mosby actually traveled/fought/raided. At the strategic level one each turn gets to “develop” ones character (John Singleton Mosby) in a somewhat RPG element. Depending on the attribute you choose to enhance will effect how your character performs and what options for character development will be available on the next turn. At the town level you can upgrade a number of facets by using the reputation you earn in each battle. This can be utilized to increase support by the locals (increasing the radius in which they will fight for you), increase the size of stables, weapons cache storage, or hospitals, drill the soldiers in that town, upgrade your hospital, or upgrade the weaponry of your soldiers.

Each turn several missions are available. These missions revolve around several themes: destruction of enemy troops or capture of enemy munitions, horses, or officers – sometimes a combination of these. There are also special “star” missions which indicate a historically important endeavor Mosby undertook.

When one chooses a mission one can choose from the soldiers within reach of that location to participate in the battle. Each soldier receives experience as he enters into and successfully survives combat. Soldiers also develop characteristics – but this occurs automatically, rather than selectively as in the case of Mosby. Soldiers find a variety of specialties including sharpshooter, ranger, cavalry, and scout. You can provide the soldiers with horses if you have them available and must have enough munitions for your men (the more experienced men consume more ammunition).

Finally you are ready for battle. This is a real-time environment similar to that found in Sid Meier‘s Gettysburg or many standard RTS games (e.g. the popular Commando series) – though it is on a small-scale compared to say Gettysburg. At the most you will have twenty men under your command. The battle ensues at a somewhat slow pace, one attempts to capture the various objectives and receives reputation points based on a number of factors (in addition to any munitions or horses captured in battle) – how many enemy troops were killed, how many surrendered, what objectives were accomplished, how many men died from your troop, etc. You are taken back to the main screen and can then use these reputation points, assign a new skill to Mosby, choose a new mission and so on.

Overall – the game is very enjoyable. I do have a few small complaints:

• You cannot save your game while in tactical battles. This is probably purposed to increase the difficulty of the game (no saving a certain point in the battle and trying over and over to obtain better results) but is annoying if you need to stop the game and work on something else for a while in the midst of a battle (you have to start the battle all over).
• I have a fairly powerful computer that runs games well – but I experienced a slow decrease in performance during tactical battles the longer I played Mosby’s Confederacy. I suspect some sort of memory leak. I found that this seemed to occur most frequently if I increased the time speed in tactical battles. At regular speed it did fine, but speeding the time progression caused the units to move faster at first but eventually (after 10-45 mins.) the graphics would become choppy, the interface non-responsive, and even playing at the slower speed could be painful.
• The documentation for the game consists of perhaps four or five pages – this is very disappointing. There is little information on the various attributes of soldiers, whether terrain/cover affects combat (I would hope so), and what the effects of putting a sharpshooter on a mount is or what having a cavalryman walk on foot is. Additionally I did not see any documentation on how to wisely utilize swords or bayonets – though both are available.
• For most gamers outside of war strategy games this game probably has tons of playability – but for individuals who are used to the weeks and weeks (or months) to beat strategy games – Mosby’s Confederacy is so short, nor does it offer significant incentive for repeating the game again after completion (and fairly abruptly ends with a statement of your stats but little indication of how you did compared to the absolutely best possible).

This said, I’m more than satisfied with my purchase (I think it was $2.50 or $5) – I probably wouldn’t spend $13 on it (but I’m a cheapskate, I usually wait a year or two after a game comes out before purchasing it – except for Battlefront/Fury Software’s Strategic Command 2). If you have a hankering for Civil War combat – its a worthwhile purchase…I’m hoping that Tilted Mill will take the opportunity to make similar games using the same engine. It seems that with refinement this engine could even be used to create a grand strategy of the civil war – but I’d be especially interested in seeing more games similar to Mosby – perhaps focusing on the war west of the mississippi (arkansas, kansas, california) or Stonewall Jackson‘s campaign in the valley.