# Summary Library

> Structured book summaries, connected as a library.

Structured summaries of specific books in seven fixed fields — the claim, why it matters,
the argument in 3-5 points, what is actually new, connections to other summaries, an
assessment, and vitals. Every point is written at three depths and all three are present in
the HTML of every page, so nothing here requires JavaScript to read.

## What these pages are, and are not

- Titles are REQUESTED, not recommended. An assessment is a position derived from the
  argument in the named edition, not a reader's review. There are no ratings on this site.
- No page quotes more than a single sentence from its book, and none is organised
  chapter by chapter. These are enforced at build time, not by policy.
- Every page links to buy the book. A summary is not a substitute for one.
- Subjects are never chosen by software. Every title was handed over by a person.

## Summaries

### A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960 — Milton Friedman & Anna Jacobson Schwartz, 1963
https://summarylibrary.com/a-monetary-history-of-the-united-states
Claim: Money is a cause of American business fluctuations rather than a record of them, and the case rests on 1929-33, when the Federal Reserve let the stock of money fall by a third and had at every stage the means to prevent it.
Connections: 2 back it up, 2 push back.

### Denationalisation of Money — F. A. Hayek, 1976
https://summarylibrary.com/denationalisation-of-money
Claim: A government monopoly on money is not a public utility that occasionally fails but the mechanism that produces the failure, and nothing short of competing issuers will end it.
Connections: 2 back it up, 3 push back.

### Debt — David Graeber, 2011
https://summarylibrary.com/debt-the-first-5000-years
Claim: Credit and debt reckoning came thousands of years before coinage, so the moral certainty that debts must always be repaid is not a fact about obligation but a political settlement that has been renegotiated many times.
Connections: 1 back it up, 3 push back.

### The Bitcoin Standard — Saifedean Ammous, 2018
https://summarylibrary.com/the-bitcoin-standard
Claim: The only property that decides whether something becomes and stays money is how hard it is to produce more of it, which makes bitcoin the successor to gold rather than a payment technology.
Connections: 1 back it up, 2 push back.

## Ideas

### Inflation is chosen, not suffered
https://summarylibrary.com/ideas/inflation-is-chosen
Proposition: Persistent inflation follows from who controls issuance rather than from shocks the issuer absorbs.

### Money before credit
https://summarylibrary.com/ideas/money-is-prior-to-credit
Proposition: Money emerged from exchange as a commodity chosen for its saleability, before and independently of credit.

### Money without a monopoly
https://summarylibrary.com/ideas/money-needs-no-monopoly
Proposition: Money works better when its issuers compete for acceptance than when one issuer holds it by law.

## Contact

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