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This is a delightful and absorbing book, both to use as a reference work and to simply browse through. The three authors, all at the time of writing on the curatorial staff of the British Museum, are eminently qualified to produce such a wide - ranging work. The conv entional, historical approach, beginning with the invention of coinage is Asia Minor in th e 7th century BC (here discussed on p. 130 under Turkey), is discarded in favour of a novel forma t. There are five sections relating to the five continents of the world, within which the ind ividual countries are arranged "in groups according to their geographical, cultural and historical relationships". The coins of each country are normally discussed chronologically, and each entry includes a table giving the date of the first coins, the first decimal coins, the main mint (s) and the present currency. The text is lucid and workmanlike, comprehensive to numismatist and l ayman alike, and each entry is lavishly illustrated with maps and photographs. The coin illu strations complement the historical narrative. The maps, over a hundred in all, provide t he geographical context, highlighting, for example, the location of mints, areas of coin circula tion, the underlying links between different countries, and the role of money in internati onal trade.
The authors justify their decision to begin with Europe by the fact that it has played a central role in the development of coinage by the Greek and Roman peoples of southern Eu rope, from where it spread round the world as a result of colonial and commercial expansion . In the Asia section, coin ages in the Islamic, Indian and Chinese traditions, which had flou rished for centuries before being replaced by coins in the European tradition, are describe d in satisfactory detail. The sections on countries in Africa, the...