"This book writes a new history of money. It uses one of the most infamous examples of monetary innovation, the assignats--a currency initially defined by French revolutionaries as circulating land--to demonstrate that money is as much a social and political mediator as it is an economic instrument. Following the assignats from creation to abandonment, the book focuses on the slippages that so quickly arose between policies and practice, between intentions and outcomes. Stuff and Money is also a new history of the French Revolution, one in which an ever-widening gap between enunciated ideals and the actual functioning of daily life drove political radicalization. Wed to the idea that liberty required both political freedom and economic de-regulation, revolutionary legislators extended free trade to include even money"--Provided by publisher.