Once upon a time, when the world was still on the gold standard, four men destroyed the financial order of things by engineering, by accident or by design, the collapse of the world’s economy. What is now known as the Great Depression is textbook history for every schoolboy, along with the names of the politicians — Hoover, FDR, and their counterparts overseas — who grappled with the challenges of the greatest economic and financial meltdown the world has yet seen. But the men truly responsible for the Great Depression — and, by association, for the revolution in government and finance that came about as a reaction — have, for the most part, eluded the scrutiny of the historian’s pen.

Today's hard times are prompting people to learn more about the forces that drive our economy, and the book Meltdown, by Thomas Woods, offers an entertaining way to do just that.