Heinz Tschachler, All Others Pay Cash: Dollar Bills and Their Cultural Work, American Studies Monograph Series, Vol. 170 (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2008), xiv + 543 pp., ISBN 978-3-8253-5537-1
All Others Pay Cash is an interdisciplinary analysis of American culture through one central case study. It explores the cultural, social, and historic contexts of America’s national money icon, covering such topics as origin, design, creative usages, counterfeiting, and its defenses by official America. Applying the theoretical model of a “circuit of culture,” the book attempts a comprehensive account of the ways in which dollar bills relate to social and political change, and how such events as the War of Independence, the Civil War, and the continuing War on Terror have shaped the themes of national and other identities.
The book should offer graduate students and scholars alike an opportunity to explore the meanings and hidden agendas of the world’s most powerful and most widely known as well as most widely used currency. In addition, it should make it possible to look at other currencies and forms of money in a similar way, much as it should help to refine and expand theoretically the analytic approach outlined in it.