SOURCE: A review of Paper and Iron, in The Historian, Vol. 59, No. 1, Fall, 1996, pp. 186-7.

In the following review, Lieberman provides a generally positive assessment of Paper and Iron.

Entering into a field of history crowded with recent studies, including the authoritative analysis of Gerald D. Feldman, Niall Ferguson makes a valuable contribution to the historiography of German inflation by recasting the history of the inflation of the early 1920s as a study of long-term structural weaknesses of the German state together with the interplay between local business élites and the national government. In contrast to most studies of inflation, which concentrate on the period from 1914 to 1924, Ferguson extends his analysis to examine inflationary pressure from the late German empire through 1927 and even into the National Socialist era. He argues that structural weaknesses of the German central government, namely its limited power to tax and the failure of...