King Dollar

Paul Blustein is the author of several critically acclaimed books about global economic affairs. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, he spent much of his career as a reporter at the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. He lives in Kamakura, Japan.

“[An] excellent book, by one of the world’s leading economic journalists and authors.”—Martin Wolf, Financial Times, “Best Summer Books of Summer 2025: Economics”“[A] fast-moving narrative.”—James Grant, Wall Street Journal“Readers would do well to turn to Paul Blustein’s King Dollar . . . a lively distillation of a complex topic.”—Max Harris, Financial Times“Magisterial.”—Edward Chancellor, Reuters“Blustein, as usual, presents a crisp, thoroughly researched and highly readable narrative.”—Clive Crook, Bloomberg“Paul Blustein paints [the dollar’s] picture with clarity and precision in his excellent new book.”—Foreign Policy“Impressively extensive and highly instructive (a stellar example of ‘all you wanted to know about the dollar’ in stripped-down form). . . . Enthusiastically recommended.”—Ian Harwood, Society of Professional Economists“Few people write about international economic issues more clearly and entertainingly than Paul Blustein. In King Dollar he applies those skills to dismantling the ever-recurring arguments that the status of the dollar as the world’s preeminent currency is under threat.”—Liaquat Ahamed, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Lords of Finance“Economics may be the dismal science, but nobody told Paul Blustein. He has given us a lively and authoritative account of why the international dominance of the dollar could continue.”—James M. Boughton, author of Harry White and the American Creed: How a Federal Bureaucrat Created the Modern Global Economy (and Failed to Get the Credit)“A must read for anyone worried about the future of the dollar in a world split by geopolitical rivalries and rapid innovations in currencies and payments systems.”—Kristin Forbes, professor, MIT Sloan School of Management“In this sizzling account of why the dollar has survived, Paul Blustein spins a tale that reaches from nineteenth-century bank porters to the volatile Obama-Trump-Biden years. Blustein is the unrivaled master of making banking and money compelling, clear, and lively.”—Roger Lowenstein, author of Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War