100 books like The Social Meaning of Money

By Viviana A. Zelizer,

Here are 100 books that The Social Meaning of Money fans have personally recommended if you like The Social Meaning of Money. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Sociological Imagination

Supriya Singh Author Of Domestic Economic Abuse: The Violence of Money

From my list on money, relationships and family violence.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a writer and a sociologist of money. I am passionate about money, relationships, and family violence, because I know from my research that talking about money opens up intimate conversations about the way people see themselves, their aspirations and hopes. Sometimes through hearing other people’s stories I have found mine. I realised while researching family violence that I too had suffered economic abuse. For me too economic abuse was ‘hidden in plain sight’. One of the most meaningful things for me is to help women and men overcome family violence and empower themselves to live with freedom.  

Supriya's book list on money, relationships and family violence

Supriya Singh Why did Supriya love this book?

Mills’ description of the sociological imagination has become central to the way I think.

He writes of the importance of linking personal troubles to social issues, of moving from the deeply personal to the impersonal, and of linking biography and history.

The sociological imagination is at the heart of my research on domestic economic abuse. It links the stories of personal devastation to the global social issue of family violence. The personal gets transformed to policy and legal issues of the criminalisation of coercive control.  

By C. Wright Mills,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Sociological Imagination as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

C. Wright Mills is best remembered for his highly acclaimed work The Sociological Imagination, in which he set forth his views on how social science should be pursued. Hailed upon publication as a cogent and hard-hitting critique, The Sociological Imagination took issue with the ascendant schools of sociology in the United States, calling for a humanist sociology connecting the social, personal, and historical dimensions of our lives. The
sociological imagination Mills calls for is a sociological vision, a way of looking at the world that can see links between the apparently private problems of the individual and important social issues.…


Book cover of Money and Marriage

Supriya Singh Author Of Domestic Economic Abuse: The Violence of Money

From my list on money, relationships and family violence.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a writer and a sociologist of money. I am passionate about money, relationships, and family violence, because I know from my research that talking about money opens up intimate conversations about the way people see themselves, their aspirations and hopes. Sometimes through hearing other people’s stories I have found mine. I realised while researching family violence that I too had suffered economic abuse. For me too economic abuse was ‘hidden in plain sight’. One of the most meaningful things for me is to help women and men overcome family violence and empower themselves to live with freedom.  

Supriya's book list on money, relationships and family violence

Supriya Singh Why did Supriya love this book?

Jan Pahl’s work opened the ‘black box’ of the household for me, to examine how men and women in intimate relationships managed and controlled their money across cultures.

She set up a typology of separate, joint, and independent money management and control that became my starting point for researching money and families also cultures. Her work also started me thinking of the gender of money, that is how men and women use, think, and own money differently, particularly when spending on children and the home.  

Book cover of Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life

Supriya Singh Author Of Domestic Economic Abuse: The Violence of Money

From my list on money, relationships and family violence.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a writer and a sociologist of money. I am passionate about money, relationships, and family violence, because I know from my research that talking about money opens up intimate conversations about the way people see themselves, their aspirations and hopes. Sometimes through hearing other people’s stories I have found mine. I realised while researching family violence that I too had suffered economic abuse. For me too economic abuse was ‘hidden in plain sight’. One of the most meaningful things for me is to help women and men overcome family violence and empower themselves to live with freedom.  

Supriya's book list on money, relationships and family violence

Supriya Singh Why did Supriya love this book?

Evan Stark’s book introduced me to the concept of  ‘coercive control’.

It is a continued and malevolent pattern of domination and entrapment that makes family violence a human rights crime. He also noted that the perpetrator, often a man, uses gendered stereotypes to control the woman, to convince her that it is she who is at fault.

Evan Stark’s insights helped me connect the gendered cultural practices of money with family violence. When these cultural ways of dealing with money were used for entrapment and abuse, money as a medium of care became a medium of coercive control.

By Evan D. Stark,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Coercive Control as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Despite its great achievements, the domestic violence revolution is stalled, Evan Stark argues, a provocative conclusion he documents by showing that interventions have failed to improve women's long-term safety in relationships or to hold perpetrators accountable. Stark traces this failure to a startling paradox, that the singular focus on violence against women masks an even more devastating reality. In millions of abusive relationships, men use a largely unidentified form of subjugation that more closely resembles kidnapping or indentured servitude than assault. He calls this pattern "coercive control". Drawing on sources that range from FBI statistics and film to dozens of…


Book cover of Understanding and Responding to Economic Abuse

Supriya Singh Author Of Domestic Economic Abuse: The Violence of Money

From my list on money, relationships and family violence.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a writer and a sociologist of money. I am passionate about money, relationships, and family violence, because I know from my research that talking about money opens up intimate conversations about the way people see themselves, their aspirations and hopes. Sometimes through hearing other people’s stories I have found mine. I realised while researching family violence that I too had suffered economic abuse. For me too economic abuse was ‘hidden in plain sight’. One of the most meaningful things for me is to help women and men overcome family violence and empower themselves to live with freedom.  

Supriya's book list on money, relationships and family violence

Supriya Singh Why did Supriya love this book?

Nicola Sharp-Jeff’s book makes a great contribution by linking research on economic abuse to policy and practice.

She has been able to use her research to set up an important organisation, Surviving Economic Abuse, to help raise awareness of economic abuse, influence law and policy and work with industry and government to address and prevent family violence.

I recognise the book’s value because I know how difficult it is to draw on research to suggest ways forward for policymakers and industry. This is a necessary step for all researchers if they want to prevent family violence and empower women.    

By Nicola Sharp-Jeffs,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Understanding and Responding to Economic Abuse as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Despite being recognised by victim-survivors as a tactic used by abusers, economic abuse has received little attention in research, policy, or practice. Written by an internationally recognised expert on economic abuse, this powerful book provides a crucial validation of the lived experience of victim-survivors, and highlights the urgent need to develop effective responses to the issue.

Breaking fresh ground, Understanding and Responding to Economic Abuse exposes the many ways in which abusers seek to control their intimate partners through economic resources and reinforces the importance of holding abusers accountable for their behaviour. Whilst the focus of this book is on…


Book cover of Money: The Unauthorized Biography

Daromir Rudnyckyj Author Of Beyond Debt: Islamic Experiments in Global Finance

From my list on how anthropology helps us understand the economy.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm an economic anthropologist and teach classes and conduct research in this area. Economic anthropology is different from economics in that it questions many of the things that economics takes for granted. For example, most economists assume that allocating goods through the market by buying and selling is the best way to organize human communities. Economic anthropologists have shown, in contrast, that many societies have been organized according to other exchange principles. In fact, some of the oldest communities in the world, such as Sumer and Babylon, based their economies around elaborate systems of redistribution, in which every citizen was guaranteed food shares.

Daromir's book list on how anthropology helps us understand the economy

Daromir Rudnyckyj Why did Daromir love this book?

Money is often thought of as a valuable thing, like gold or silver. 

This leads us to presume that it must be finite in quality due to its scarcity. Drawing on anthropological studies of objects such as Yap stones, massive stone disks found on a far-flung island in the Pacific Ocean.

Martin shows instead that money is not so much a thing but an abstract system for tracking who has what and who is entitled to what, similar to what the anthropologist Keith Hart has called a “memory bank.” By rethinking money along these lines, we might be able to rethink how we decide who gets what and who doesn’t get what in our communities.

By Felix Martin,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Money as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From ancient currency to Adam Smith, from the gold standard to shadow banking and the Great Recession: a sweeping historical epic that traces the development and evolution of one of humankind’s greatest inventions.

What is money, and how does it work? In this tour de force of political, cultural and economic history, Felix Martin challenges nothing less than our conventional understanding of money. He describes how the Western idea of money emerged from interactions between Mesopotamia and ancient Greece and was shaped over the centuries by tensions between sovereigns and the emerging middle classes. He explores the extraordinary diversity of…


Book cover of The Origins of Money

L. Randall Wray Author Of Making Money Work for Us: How MMT Can Save America

From my list on helping you understand how money really works.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been studying money since the early 1980s, when my dissertation advisor—the late and great Hyman Minsky—warned me not to do “Genesis”, origins stories of money. But I couldn't resist. I'm one of the founders of Modern Money Theory (MMT), an approach developed over the past three decades that has garnered tens of thousands of followers and earned the hatred of the elite. And, yet, those who know how money really works—or who embrace public policy pursuing the public interest (Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), and even central bankers—have admitted that government cannot run out of money. I’ve written hundreds of academic papers, more blogs, many books, and given hundreds of interviews presenting the MMT alternative.

L.'s book list on helping you understand how money really works

L. Randall Wray Why did L. love this book?

This is based on a lecture given by Grierson in London in 1970. (Do you see a pattern? Lectures can make entertaining books.)

He was the world’s most famous numismatist (expert on coins). A professor at the University of Cambridge, UK, for seventy years (!), he spent most of his salary collecting medieval coins, donating 20,000 of them to the university’s museum—the world’s premier collection. But coins were invented around 700 B.C., while money has been around for 6000 years.

In this book he speculates on money’s origins (in Babylonian temples)—linking it to the ancient practice of Wergeld (blood money). He hypothesized that money originates as a measure of debt owed to victims. Hence, the link of money to debt and sin made by Atwood. Money is not a “thing” but a record of indebtedness.

Today, it is tax debt that drives money: you work hard to get money to…

By Philip Grierson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Origins of Money as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.


Book cover of The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life

Jen Sincero Author Of You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth

From my list on adopt a mindset of wealth.

Why am I passionate about this?

Jen Sincero is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, success coach, and motivational cattle prod who’s helped countless people transform their personal and professional lives via her products, speaking engagements, newsletters, seminars and books. Her #1 New York Times bestseller, You Are a Badass®: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life (2013), spent over 4 years on the NY Times bestseller list, has sold over 3 million copies, is available in over 35 languages, and continues to grow in popularity around the globe. Her follow-ups, You Are a Badass® at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth (2017), also a NY Times bestseller, You Are a Badass® Every Day (2018), and Badass Habits (2020) are written with the same signature sass, down-to-earth humor and blunt practicality that made You Are a Badass® an indomitable bestseller and Jen a celebrated voice in the world of self-development.

Jen's book list on adopt a mindset of wealth

Jen Sincero Why did Jen love this book?

Written by an extremely smart smartypants, activist, and fundraiser, Lynne Twist shares her fascinating take on money as gleaned from her decades working with everyone from top CEOs to tribal people who don’t even know what money is.

By Lynne Twist,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Soul of Money as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This liberating book shows us that examining our attitudes toward money-earning it, spending it, and giving it away-offers surprising insight into our lives. Through personal stories and practical advice, Lynne Twist asks us to discover our relationship with money, understand how we use it, and by assessing our core human values, align our relationship with it to our desired goals. In doing so, we can transform our lives.

The Soul of Money now includes a foreword from Jack Canfield and a new introduction by Lynne Twist, in which she explores the effects of the Great Recession and environmental concerns about…


Book cover of Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen

Katherine Dykstra Author Of What Happened to Paula: An Unsolved Death and the Danger of American Girlhood

From my list on the complexity of American girlhood.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was raised in the Midwest by parents who told me I could have whatever kind of life I wanted. I took them at their word, never considering that my gender might come with limitations. It wasn’t until I had my first child and began investigating Paula’s case that the true complexity of womanhood began to dawn on me. I’ve since spent nine years reading and writing and thinking about the experience of being a woman in the modern world. 

Katherine's book list on the complexity of American girlhood

Katherine Dykstra Why did Katherine love this book?

This novel might have been published a half-century ago, but the situation—wherein beauty is currency, women’s bodies with their bleeding and their smells are betrayers, and the institution of marriage is, well, an institution—feels more than relevant today. The book’s protagonist, Sasha Davis is a former prom-queen who is aware of all the possibility that exists outside of the confines of her loveless marriage. Liberated, she makes moves to extricate herself from the relationship, but what she can't shed is the very thing that holds her back: her own womanhood. The book’s tone, a sort of “Can you believe I have to put up with this?” is rife with humor even as it lays out the fury-making double standards women had to face then (and now).

By Alix Kates Shulman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

OVER A MILLION COPIES SOLD

The cult classic that defined a generation - first UK publication in 47 years

'An extraordinary novel ... women will like it and men should read it for the good of their immortal souls' Los Angeles Times

Sasha Davis has everything a girl in 1950s suburbia could want: beauty, intelligence and an all-star sports captain boyfriend. All she needs to succeed is to keep her skin clear and her intelligence hidden under her Prom Queen tiara.

But when she drops out of college to marry, Sasha soon realises her life has become a fearful countdown…


Book cover of Money and Empire: The International Gold Standard, 1890-1914

Perry Mehrling Author Of Money and Empire: Charles P. Kindleberger and the Dollar System

From my list on the forces making the global money system.

Why am I passionate about this?

My interest in money (understanding it, not so much making it!) dates from undergraduate days at Harvard, 1977-1981, exactly the time when the dollar system was being put back together under Volcker after the international monetary disorder and domestic stagflation of the 1970s. The previous decade had very much disrupted the personal economics of my family, perhaps in much the same way that the Depression had disrupted Kindleberger’s, and set me off on a lifelong quest to understand why. Forty years and four books later, I feel like I have made some progress, and hope that my book can save readers forty years in their own question to understand money!

Perry's book list on the forces making the global money system

Perry Mehrling Why did Perry love this book?

My own book title is explicitly an homage to this book, which tells the story of the sterling standard in its heyday. 

It is my dream that readers will put my book next to this one on their bookshelves, reading mine as a continuation of the story that DeCecco tells so masterfully. He is more economic historian, and I am more historian of economic ideas, so the books are different (and his original was in Italian), but they can be read as in conversation with one another. 

This is another book that I look forward to rereading, now that I know more, and engaging more deeply and systematically.

Book cover of The Nature of Money

Tim Di Muzio Author Of An Anthropology of Money: A Critical Introduction

From my list on money and capitalism from a political economist.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a Canadian political economist working in Australia as an Associate Professor in International Relations and Political Economy at the University of Wollongong, just south of Sydney. I’ve been fascinated by the history of capitalism and money since post-graduate school. Eventually I had some time to do a deep dive into the existing scholarly literature on money and have so far written two books on the topic and multiple articles. I hope you enjoy my book recommendations as much as I enjoyed reading them.   

Tim's book list on money and capitalism from a political economist

Tim Di Muzio Why did Tim love this book?

This book was a real eye-opener and can be considered seminal across the social sciences for its breadth and depth of analysis on money. 

I loved this book because it filled so many gaps in my knowledge. I was drawn to it because I once asked my professor how new money was generated and he said he knew but he forgot. 

This made me think that money might not be all that important to understanding capitalism. Alas, I was dead wrong of course and returned to my question years later.

That’s how I found Professor Ingham’s book. I still have comprehensive notes from his work and consult them regularly. 

This book is essential for anyone who wants to understand the past and present of money. 

By Geoffrey Ingham,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Nature of Money as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this important new book, Geoffrey Ingham draws on neglected traditions in the social sciences to develop a theory of the 'social relation' of money. * Genuinely multidisciplinary approach, based on a thorough knowledge of theories of money in the social sciences * An original development of the neglected heterodox theories of money * New histories of the origins and development of forms of money and their social relations of production in different monetary systems * A radical interpretation of capitalism as a particular type of monetary system and the first sociological outline of the institutional structure of the social…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in money, domestic violence, and sociology?

11,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them. Browse their picks for the best books about money, domestic violence, and sociology.

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