In this ambitious book, Patrick Brantlinger offers a cultural history of Great Britain focused on the concept of "public credit," from the 1694 founding of the Bank of England to the present.

Patrick Brantlinger is Professor of English and Cultural Studies at Indiana University. He is also the author of Bread and Circuses: Theories of Mass Cultures as Social Decay and Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, both from Cornell.

Brantlinger's immensely learned third book carries on the current fashion in literary criticism of culture critique, employing both Marxist and postmodern categories.

Regina Gagnier, Stanford University:

Patrick Brantlinger is one of our leading cultural historians. In this new work on empire, debt, and fetishism, he extends his temporal and theoretical range.

David Evans, Cornell College:

Brantlinger marches with surprising thoroughness across a tremendous range of texts and history.... His discussion of the way philosophers of money.... treat issues of national credit is comprehensive and helpful to his overall argument.... In short, given the immensity of the subject and the tremendous range of materials Brantlinger treats, his achievement is impressive and illuminating.