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).

米尔顿•弗里德曼（Milton Friedman,1912-2006），美国经济学家，以研究宏观经济学、微观经济学、经济史、统计学以及主张自由放任资本主义而闻名。1976年被授予诺贝尔经济学奖，以表扬他在消费分析、货币供应理论及历史，以及稳定政策复杂性等范畴的贡献，被誉为20世纪最重要的经 济学家之一。

安娜•J. 施瓦茨（Anna J. Schwartz，1915—2012），美国经济史学家，美国国民经济研究局高级研究员。