Writing in the June 1965 issue of the "Economic Journal", Harry G. Johnson begins with a sentence seemingly calibrated to the scale of the book he set himself to review: 'The long-awaited "Monetary History of the United States" by Friedman and Schwartz is in every sense of the term a monumental scholarly achievement - monumental in its sheer bulk, monumental in the definitiveness of its treatment of innumerable issues, large and small ...monumental, above all, in the theoretical and statistical effort and ingenuity that have been brought to bear on the solution of complex and subtle economic issues'.Friedman and Schwartz marshaled massive historical data and sharp analytics to support the claim that monetary policy - steady control of the money supply - matters profoundly in the management of the nation's economy, especially in navigating serious economic fluctuations. In their influential chapter 7, "The Great Contraction" - which Princeton published in 1965 as a separate paperback - they address the central economic event of the century, the Depression. According to Hugh Rockoff, writing in January 1965: 'If Great Depressions could be prevented through timely actions by the monetary authority (or by a monetary rule), as Friedman and Schwartz had contended, then the case for market economies was measurably stronger.' Milton Friedman won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2000 for work related to "A Monetary History " as well as to his other Princeton University Press book, "A Theory of the Consumption Function" (1957).

米爾頓•弗裏德曼（Milton Friedman,1912-2006），美國經濟學傢，以研究宏觀經濟學、微觀經濟學、經濟史、統計學以及主張自由放任資本主義而聞名。1976年被授予諾貝爾經濟學奬，以錶揚他在消費分析、貨幣供應理論及曆史，以及穩定政策復雜性等範疇的貢獻，被譽為20世紀最重要的經 濟學傢之一。

安娜•J. 施瓦茨（Anna J. Schwartz，1915—2012），美國經濟史學傢，美國國民經濟研究局高級研究員。