EMU may well be trumpeted as the great economic experiment in monetary union, but as John Chown shows in this superb book, there have been many other examples of monetary unions over the years - some successful, others not so. In this comprehensive historical overview, the author writes about monetary unions with an admirable completeness and covers such themes as: the gold standard, monetary unions in countries and areas from Latin America to The British Empire to Japan and Korea with many in between, the EMU and its policy ramifications and the CFA Franc zone in the former French colonies.