beyond the usual qualifications one may find in a book of which the final direction is quite clear, but where the requirement of intellectual strictness leads to the analysis of both the pros and the cons of a problem. It may also seem to some that this book deals with two different subjects, currency competition and monetary union, which have been joined together more or less randomly. We believe, however, that this impression will be dis­ pelled as soon as they commence reading. Both sections of the book deal with one and the same topic: the optimal organization of a monetary system. Present efforts to achieve European monetary unification all suffer from the same preju­ dices with respect to the organization of the monetary systems within each country and within the world as a whole.