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Rating: 
Summary: An essential reference guide
Review: Kindleberger's work on financial history is designed as an undergraduate guide, but such is the wealth of detail and information that it serves as a useful reference tome long after the undergraduate work is completed. Kindleberger takes the reader step by step through the financial issues of the European economy as it developed from feudal to capitalist society. The explanations of the gold versus silver standard debate (bi-metalism) is particularly helpful and clear, given the complexity of the issue. The charting of the relative developments of the UK and Continental financial systems, and the advantages that they gave the British in the nineteenth century, are also well written. A reader looking for a wealth of data is likely to be disappointed. Figures are provided, but there are other books that will give reams of numbers for the economic historian (several of which are cited by Kindleberger - the references of this book alone are worth buying it for). Overall, this is widely and rightly regarded as a valuable contribution to the field of economic history.
Rating:
Summary: Great Resource
Review: This is a fantatsic book for those interested in history as well as economics. The book provides a very detailed account of the various economic forces in Western Europe from the evolution of the banking systems in Europe, to modern events. Along the way it covers in detail and examines the causes of such events as rampant hyperinflation in Germany after World War I, and the need for many European countries to devalue their currencies during the Depression of the 1930's. I would highly recommend.
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