The Story of Silver: How the White Metal Shaped America and the Modern World

'The Story of Silver' offers a captivating glimpse into the role the precious metal has played in the US from its founding to the modern era. Among its numerous points of interest are Alexander Hamilton's tenure as treasurer, the Coinage Act of 1873 (aka, "the Crime of 1873"), William Jennings Bryan's tireless free silver efforts, the presidencies of both Roosevelts, and other chapters similarly stretched across the centuries. I found the book fascinating in parts and edifying in others. Any student or teacher of Economics, Business, Accounting, and/or US History will find plenty to enjoy in this. I imagine investors might also find the book interesting for its look into the silver ventures of Nelson Bunker Hunt and Warren Buffett. Any coin collector would love this book as well.<br /><br />To my surprise, 'The Story of Silver' did not provide a larger history into how silver shaped the Americas, both North and South. I somewhat blame myself for this since the book's dust jacket and table of contents clarify its focus—the United States—but I nevertheless expected something pan-American from the book's subtitle. Alas, there are few pirates and conquistadors in this 'story.' The author's lack of attention to the impact of silver on Native Americans in US history also appears to be a blind spot. While I am no expert on the subject, the Pyramid Lake War of 1860 was a direct result of the discovery of the Comstock Lode in 1859. Surely this and similar instances from US history could have filled a chapter.<br /><br />Overall, 'The Story of Silver' is a good book. I liked it and recommend it to anyone with business or interest in the white metal. Believe me, after reading this, you won't look at silverware the same again. 3.75 stars.

Silver somehow captivates a particular brand of libertarians. There is a long history of government meddling in which it was pegged to gold/the dollar at various prices due to various political compromises. FDR agreed to purchase it in exchange for the political support of the silver states, and WJB backed it to end deflationary period. Yet at the same time, it promises an alternative to fiat currencies. For a long time, the government limited sales of silver and forced some individuals to sell. There has also been a history of speculation on the price of silver, which governments tried to limit in various ways. Together these factors somehow entrance and enrage the libertarians.<br /><br />The book itself is strictly historical and avoids making any major points. It was kind of weird how disconnected the book was from other theories, apart from some generic anti-government commentary. Overall, I enjoyed reading and felt it was a useful chunk of history with implications for monetary theory, investment theory, government corruption, political wrangling and more. Still, I'd never recommend the book to anyone.

Interesting story about the monetary history of silver in the US.<br /><br />A highlight for me was how Roosevelt’s Silver Purchase Act of 1934 impacted China.

The story of silver, this ain’t. <br /><br />It’s the story of the Hunt brothers squeeze, with a 100 page introduction about “the crime of 1873,” when silver was demonetized, William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” crusade to reintroduce bimetallism, FDR’s attempted ramp with Pittman and Morgenthau, and some rather desperate conspiracy theory material regarding JFK.<br /><br />The author should have left all that stuff out and should have concentrated on the Hunt brothers and perhaps their nemesis, Henry Jarecki. That story is told rather well. Also, I happen to share William Silber’s sympathy for the Hunt brothers and I’m happy somebody chose to stand up for them. And for a Salomon alumnus like me it was fun to read about Engelhardt and Philipp Brothers.<br /><br />In short, this is not a bad book, but Silber fails to reach the heights attained with his previous effort, his tremendous Volcker biography from some seven years ago.<br />

“The Story of Silver” focuses on the precious metal’s role in U.S. monetary policy over the years, beginning with Alexander Hamilton’s interest in silver as part of U.S. coinage and currency and continuing to recent years. More pages than necessary are devoted to the Hunt brothers’ price-fixing shenanigans of the early 1980s, but over all an interesting read for numismatics nerds like me.

This book is not for readers looking for multiple millennia worth of analysis on silver’s long arc as a store of value. Anyone expecting to learn about the usage of silver in the Roman empire or other ancient civilizations needs to look elsewhere. In Silver: How the White Metal Shaped America and the Modern World, author William L. Silber sticks to explaining the role silver has played in the United States' monetary system; even this range is limited, as almost all of the book takes place from the age of William Jennings Bryan onwards. <br /><br />Much spoken of early on is the so-called Crime of 1873, an act which demonetized silver in the United States in favor of the gold standard. This was a particular bugaboo of the Bryanites and his western allies in the House and Senate. The concept of a division between east coast bankers and western silver mining interests is a theme Silber frequently returns to throughout the book. As might be expected given its title, any role silver played prior to the Bryan/McKinley era goes largely unmentioned.<br /><br />The Great Depression looms heavily from the second half of the book onward. Franklin Roosevelt’s setting of silver prices--and the impact this had on everything from China’s fight against Japan to his relationship with various members of the legislative branch--is looked at by Silber. Senators from the Silver State itself were well-represented during fights over silver policy during FDR’s time in office: Key Pittman and Pat McCarran both made sure their pro-silver voices were heard. <br /><br />President Kennedy’s decision to allow the public trading of silver in 1963 set off quite a ride for the metal, with its trading on Commodity Exchange (Comex) and the subsequent price changes this elicited covered by Silber. The author does do a bit of damage to his credibility when he floats the possibility of JFK’s assassination being tied to his silver policy. Though he admits this is a long shot, the insertion of such an out-of-left-field idea seemed discordant with the rest of the book.<br /><br />No family receives more focus than the Hunts. Oil tycoon Nelson Bunker Hunt’s flirtation with silver investing becomes a full-blown obsession throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and he even ensures his brother (and Kansas City Chiefs owner) Lamar gets in on the white metal action. As one of the country’s earliest billionaires, Nelson Bunker Hunt had plenty of money to throw around in an attempt to corner the silver market. Unfortunately for the Hunt brothers, their shenanigans in this arena were exposed and came back to bite them.<br /><br />The story of Dr. Henry Jarecki, a psychiatrist turned commodities trader, allows Silber to spin another tale of how this commodity was leveraged for profit. In this instance, Jarecki seized arbitrage opportunities when it came to the price difference between Britain and America to wring a major killing from silver. Anecdotes of men like Henry Waltuch (names unlikely to be on the tip of any non-silver bug’s tongue) and the roles they played during the mainstreaming of trading silver as a commodity are laid out well throughout Silver: How the White Metal Shaped America and the Modern World’s pages.<br /><br />Readers not gung-ho about the ins and outs of gold and silver markets are likely to find this work of nonfiction a yawner. The book seems proud to keep its blinders on while it has a laserlike focus on the silver-related aspect of things like the deflationary 1890s, the Great Depression, and 1970s inflation. While it does contain some strong personalities and Silber clearly did his homework before writing it, on the whole its dryness is likely to turn off many more than it ropes in.<br /><br /><br />-Andrew Canfield Denver, Colorado

Silber's book takes an appropriately detailed look at the other monetary metal in American history. He shows that debates about silver have remained some of the most fraught in American history, and just as silver has made and ruined fortunes, it has also made and ruined political careers. <br /><br />Many are familiar with William Jennings Bryan's failed presidential campaign for "16-to-1" recoinage of silver in 1896. Fewer remember Nevada Senator Key Pittman, a Mississippian orphan who studied law (with the assistance of Bible classes from Woodrow Wilson's father), and made a fortune with U.S. Steel's Charles Schwab in Nevada mines, before being elected to the Senate in 1912. In 1919 his "Pittman Act"forced the U.S. Treasury to deliver millions of dollars of silver dollars, at the prevailing price of a dollar per ounce, to Britain and India to replenish their vaults after the war, while buying up domestic silver and coining it at the same price. He later helped negotiate the international silver revival clause in the Monetary Conference at London in June 1933, and pushed Roosevelt to buy all domestically produced silver at 64.5 cents an ounce (when it was far below that) in December 1933. He later helped negotiate the Silver Purchase Act of May 1934, which eventually nationalized the metal and purchased it all at 49.5 cents an ounce. This seemingly picayune action had world-historical ramifications. It purchased so much silver that China was forced off of the metal, causing a crisis in the nationalist government and an attack in the North by the Japanese. It thus helped drive China to both war and communism.<br /><br />During World War II, new Nevada Senator Pat McCarran (a Francisco Franco admirer) got the metal up to 71 cents and then in 1946 90.5 cents an ounce, which the U.S. government would both buy and sell, but eventually inflation made this less substantial. In the 1960s JFK withdrew the $5 and $10 silver certificates, and stopped selling the metal. He then asked for Congress to replace $1 silver certificates (the only 1 dollar bills in existence) because people had started hoarding them in expectation the free market price would go over 90.5, and to open up a regular market in silver. Nevada Senator Alan Bible fought it tooth and nail, but it passed in 1963, and thus opened the first silver market, at Comex in New York, in 30 years. Soon a surge of interest in coins for collecting and for new vending machines caused Congress in 1965 to remove silver from half-dollars and not use the old silver certificates at all. In 1967 LBJ promised only to sell free silver ot legitimate industrial uses, then to no one, and soon after Congress passed a lot limiting silver certificate funds to one final year. In 1970 it removed the last silver from the Kennedy half-dollar, ending the link between silver and money entirely. It was almost a free-market metal again. In 1980, the absurdly wealthy Hunt family tried to buy about 1/4 of the world's silver market, when the metal hit a height it still hasn't seen, but lost it all in a market downdraft and were convicted of trying to corner the market, which then returned to its more somnolent state.<br /><br />The book spent too much time on later events, and less on earlier, but it was a much-needed look at this essential part of monetary history, one which most Americans have now forgotten.

I saw this in the Audible Plus catalogue when I was in need of something to listen to on a long walk. I've read other "history of a commodity" books (oil, salt) and found them interesting. This wasn't as comprehensive, but it was still interesting.<br />Although the history of silver goes back much farther than the history of the US, Silber starts with Hamilton deciding to coin both silver and gold. He proceeds to the "crime of 1873", also known as the Mint Act of 1873 but never referred to as such, which demonetized silver, William Jennings Bryan and his crusade for free silver, machinations by the Roosevelt, Kennedy, and LBJ, and finally efforts by individuals such as Henry Jarecki, the Hunt brothers, and Warren Buffet to make money on silver in financial markets.<br />I knew of Hamilton and Bryan, but I was not as familiar with events in the 20th century. Roosevelt's involvement with the silver market was interesting although the author's reporting seemed colored by his own opinions about economics. The further machinations of the Kennedy and Johnson eras were also new to me, I suspect because silver was being pushed by western mining interests and that wasn't really in the news on the east coast. The author does push things a bit too far in suggesting that angry silver investors were somehow involved in the Kennedy assassination. <br />I had not heard of Henry Jarecki at all. He is a psychiatrist who dealt in silver as a commodity - especially with options and futures and use of computers. His career kind of reminded me of the original Sackler, immigrating from Eastern Europe and becoming a doctor while also being very involved in investment and philanthropy. He just managed to avoid getting involved with addictive drugs.<br />I did know of the Hunts, remembering their attempt to corner the silver market fondly. I worked in a restaurant at the time and discovered we had gotten several rolls of silver dimes from our bank. They were supposed to open hand-rolled coin from customers and verify it before sending it out to businesses, but the commercial teller had gotten lazy. At that point, silver dimes were worth several times their face value when we could really use the money. It was interesting learning more about the Hunts and their lifestyle. <br />Some of the author's writing quirks, such as constantly calling silver "the white metal" were a little annoying, and his personal biases were clear, but on the whole it was interesting.

The book tanked in the 2nd half with its obsession regarding the Hunt Brothers and their 1980 Silver squeeze. In fact, it seems well over 80% of the story is centered around how silver impacted the US. Hmm.<br /><br />Chaos theory - a miner hits the Comstock Lode in Nevada, flooding the market with silver, devaluing China's reserve asset, opening up the floodgates for further Japanese military expansion.<br /><br />William Jennings Bryan really wanted to be president, and his man of the people Cross of Gold speech kind of almost got him there.<br /><br />One of the Hunt Brothers decided to call the AFL-NFL championship match the "Super Bowl", so that worked out.<br /><br />John Sherman, brother of war criminal and genocidal maniac william tecumseh, orchestrated the Crime of 73, that sneakily removed silver from the coinage act, screwing over western states in the process<br /><br />Way too many opinion pieces regarding politicians from the author<br /><br />Demand finds supply, except with bitcoin, and sure enough, in 79-80 people were selling their silverware and teapots to cash in on the white metal bull run<br /><br />Why did the Hunt Brothers not have an exit strategy? Once regulators caught on they had to know their days were numbered, they're loans would be called in, their holdings and mansion and horses and oil wells could be confiscated. I thought the whole point of cornering the market on something valuable was to be able to sell at the top<br /><br />Anyway, the first half of the book is OK, if rather dry, but the over focus on the Hunt Brothers made it a chore to read at the end

An interesting book that talks about the history of silver going back into the 1800's. I learned a number of new bits of information, and it focused on about 5-6 important parts in the history of silver from 1873 to the present day. It covered the crime of 1873, a point that is rarely even mentioned in history classes, the impact of silver policy on other countries such as China, and the episode with the Hunt brothers in the late 1970's. Throughout its history it has been subject to significant lobbying efforts and manipulation. All in all an interesting and educational book. <br /><br />While this may have a more limited audience, it is a good book.