Includes bibliographical references and index.

This volume recounts the timeless story of our obsession with gold. Mixing myth, legend, and historical fact, the author looks at the people, places, and events that have evoked desperation and frustration in human behavior. Starting with a broad palette of colorful characters, Pharaoh Hatshepsut, King Midas, Alexander the Great, Emperor Justinian, the Inca Emperor Atahualpa, Martin Luther, Kublai Khan, Sir Isaac Newton, and Charles De Gaulle, the author recounts the sequence of events that led to gold becoming the international monetary standard in the 19th Century only to fall to obscurity amid the collapse of the Bretton Woods System in 1971. This is the story of people so blinded in their pursuit of gold that they could not comprehend the difference between useless metal and real wealth