From 1938 through 1949 the franc lost 95 percent of its purchasing power. The authors, who teach at Bordeaux and Paris, describe this process succinctly, digesting a great mass of material and commenting on it very intelligently. Half the book traces the franc's fall in terms of gold, foreign currencies and purchasing power; the rest describes the changes that accompanied this process in French central and commercial banking, exchange control, the monetary affairs of the French Union, and France's relation to the International Monetary Fund and the European Recovery Program.