ABSTRACT
The first printing press was brought to Cambridge, Massachusetts, from England in 1638 by Stephen Day, a former locksmith. While printed matter was available from the mid-seventeenth century onward, albeit in limited form, the growth of print culture was relatively slow in the colonies. In positing a form of exchange in which an abstract public is only made real through print, Michael Warner's study raises fundamental questions about the very nature of money as both representational and as an object of exchange, and this is at the heart of the debates over paper as opposed to other forms of currency, such as in the paper versus specie debates. Ultimately, the print revolution brought to the foreground and even intensified fears and biases that had long existed in American politics, economics, and culture, especially in regards to paper money.
