Charles Wheelan's wonderfully whimsical, best-selling Naked series tackles the
weird, surprisingly colorful world of money and banking.
Consider the $20 bill.
It has no more value, as a simple slip of paper, than Monopoly money. Yet even
children recognize that tearing one into small pieces is an act of inconceivable
stupidity. What makes a $20 bill actually worth twenty dollars? In the third
volume of his best-selling Naked series, Charles Wheelan uses this seemingly
simple question to open the door to the surprisingly colorful world of money and
banking.
The search for an answer triggers countless other questions along the way: Why
does paper money ("fiat currency" if you