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Rating: 
Summary: Hard to read, only for economists or wannabe economists
Review: I hated this book because it's hard to read. I don't like wading through sentences as long as paragraphs full of obscure words that require a dictionary nearby.
I just wanted to get a general understanding of money and the Federal Reserve from a source I trust and admire - Milton Friedman. I don't mind facts and figures but I resent writing that forces me into hard labor to decipher the meaning. I think good writing is communicating in the simplest way possible, not in trying to impress the reader with the author's vocabulary and ability to construct impenetrable, wannabe-sophisticated, long, compound sentences.
Don't get me wrong, I'm an engineer and I've got a decent vocabulary and fairly decent language skills.
I've found the books by Murray N. Rothbard to be much easier to read than this book though not as easy to read as I would like. I'm still looking for the perfect monetary history/economics book. I hope there's one out there somewhere.
Rating: 
Summary: Negative Review Missed the Very Point of the Book
Review: I read the reviews and found them helpful, but the unnamed reviewer that attributed the Great Depression to causes totally other than this book cites, and bashed Friedman as "not having a leg to stand on" concerned me because it seems the reviewer missed the very point of the book. Nobel prize winning economist Milton Friedman and his co-author undertook the monumental work of tracing money supply for each year for nearly a century. In doing so, they did the staggering amount of work required to show all of us something very powerful. To say they don't have a leg to stand on is disconcerting because it seems to indicate a review without a reading, or at least understanding. Obviously the Great Depression was the result of of complex interactions within the economy. What Friedman tries to do is show us the EMPIRICAL evidence for interaction between a contracting money supply and a worsening economic situation, and a steady money supply and a bettering economic situation. The Great Depression may have come about because of arrogant decisions and cascading failures, and those who decided to contract the money supply evidently were a very important trigger. I can say "evidently" because Friedman's research gives us the chance to observe the evidence for ourselves. To have advanced our knowledge of economics in a practical way, to have given useful facts for fending off depressions, is a gift. That's why this book will remain a watershed work in the history of economics.
Rating:
Summary: Negative Review Missed the Very Point of the Book
Review: I read the reviews and found them helpful, but the unnamed reviewer that attributed the Great Depression to causes totally other than this book cites, and bashed Friedman as "not having a leg to stand on" concerned me because it seems the reviewer missed the very point of the book. Nobel prize winning economist Milton Friedman and his co-author undertook the monumental work of tracing money supply for each year for nearly a century. In doing so, they did the staggering amount of work required to show all of us something very powerful. To say they don't have a leg to stand on is disconcerting because it seems to indicate a review without a reading, or at least understanding. Obviously the Great Depression was the result of of complex interactions within the economy. What Friedman tries to do is show us the EMPIRICAL evidence for interaction between a contracting money supply and a worsening economic situation, and a steady money supply and a bettering economic situation. The Great Depression may have come about because of arrogant decisions and cascading failures, and those who decided to contract the money supply evidently were a very important trigger. I can say "evidently" because Friedman's research gives us the chance to observe the evidence for ourselves. To have advanced our knowledge of economics in a practical way, to have given useful facts for fending off depressions, is a gift. That's why this book will remain a watershed work in the history of economics.
Rating: 
Summary: An Excellent Partial History
Review: Monetary History of the US served a vital purpose when it first came out, and still has much use value. For a brief period, economists ignored the importance of variations in the nominal quantity of money to business cycles. This book provided important evidence that helped correct that error. Economists used to focus on spending rather than the money supply. This book, along with subsequent work, showed that money matters.The most important part of this book is the section on the Great Contraction. Federal Reserve policy did contract the money supply by 1/3 during the early years of the depression. The Federal Reserve did revive the depression by increasing reserve requirements in 1937. The collapse of the banking system collapsed the real economy. The recovery of the banking system was important to the recovery of industry. Money matters. The style of this book is excellent. Considering the sophistication of its subject matter, it is highly readable. It gets into both statistics and relevant written history. It also has a helpful appendix on the determinants of the money supply. There are some problems with this book. Money is not all that matters. Government policies that prevented wage deflation contributed greatly to the Great Depression. Of course, this book was meant to focus on monetary history alone, as the title implies. But, readers must keep the limitations of such a narrow focus in mind when considering the explanatory power of this book. Its' authors also have too little appreciation for private banking systems (Friedman latter embraced free banking). Despite its' limitations, this book is important as a empirical source for understanding how money matters to economic conditions.
Rating: 
Summary: A monetarist without a leg to stand on...
Review: Professor Friedman argues that the Great Depression was caused by the Fed's reluctance and ultimate failure to provide sufficient liquidity to the fiancial system in order to save it from collapse. This is pure folly, as the Fed cut rates from 6.0% to 1.5% during 1929-31, during a time when the money supply did not decline until late 1930 and early 1931, while the stock market fell nearly 75%. While some counter with the argument that Smoot-Hawley Tarrif Act of 1930 (which took effect in mid-1931) caused the Depression, nations such as Argentina, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, the Dutch East Indies, and South Africa all began raising tariffs in 1928-29 against a backdrop of commodities price deflation and a collapse in currencies. I am sorry, Professor Friedman, the Great Depression was caused by misinvestment, excessive credit expansion, and structural collapse in the international credit system. Sound familiar (October 1998)?
Rating:
Summary: The Definative work in Economics
Review: This monumental work swept away all the now archaic notions about especially the great depression. The old rationalisms that the causes of the depression were 1) the Smoot Hawley terrif 2)over speculation in the stock market or 3)that lower interrest rates are the same as increased liquidity have been swept in to the dust bin of history repeated now only by the technically challenged.
Rating:
Summary: The Definative work in Economics
Review: This monumental work swept away all the now archaic notions about especially the great depression. The old rationalisms that the causes of the depression were 1) the Smoot Hawley terrif 2)over speculation in the stock market or 3)that lower interrest rates are the same as increased liquidity have been swept in to the dust bin of history repeated now only by the technically challenged.
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