Includes bibliographical references (p. 397-407) and index

Prologue: The supreme possession -- Get gold at all hazards -- Midas's wish and the creatures of pure chance -- Darius's bathtub and the cackling of the geese -- The symbol and the faith -- Gold, salt, and the blessed town -- The legacy of Eoba, Babba, and Udd -- The great chain reaction -- The disintegrating age and the Kings' ransoms -- The sacred thirst -- The fatal poison and private money -- The Asian necropolis and Hien Tsung's inadvertent innovation -- The great recoinage and the last of the magicians -- The true doctrine and the great evil -- The new mistress and the cursed discovery -- The badge of honor -- The most stupendous conspiracy and the endless chain -- The Norman Conquest -- The end of the epoch -- The transcending value -- World War Eight and the thirty ounces of gold -- Epilogue: The supreme possession?

This volume recounts the timeless story of our obsession with gold. Mixing myth, legend, and historical fact, the author looks at the people, places, and events that have evoked desperation and frustration in human behavior. Starting with a broad palette of colorful characters, Pharaoh Hatshepsut, King Midas, Alexander the Great, Emperor Justinian, the Inca Emperor Atahualpa, Martin Luther, Kublai Khan, Sir Isaac Newton, and Charles De Gaulle, the author recounts the sequence of events that led to gold becoming the international monetary standard in the 19th Century only to fall to obscurity amid the collapse of the Bretton Woods System in 1971. This is the story of people so blinded in their pursuit of gold that they could not comprehend the difference between useless metal and real wealth

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