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The Untold Story of Treasury Titans at War
by Jill Eicher
The never-before-told story of the epic battle of wills between Andrew Mellon and Winston Churchill, as they debated the repayment of the enormous sums loaned by America to Great Britain during World War I.
Andrew Mellon, one of the most accomplished businessmen of his era, is almost unknown today. To this shy, diffident (but brilliant) man fell the daunting task of collecting the war debts from European governments still devastated by World War I and struggling to recover economically. Dealing with the U.S. Congress and the heads of foreign governments on the world stage became one of the great adventures of his life.
Winston Churchill is one of the best-known figures in history. Mellon vs. Churchill presents Churchill through a different lens, focusing on his service as Chancellor of the Exchequer when Great Britain was the largest debtor to the United States. That he became the most vocal critic of American foreign policy during that time is a scarcely told chapter of economic history—and his long and contentious debate with Mellon has seldom been explored.
Yet, during the five years that Churchill served as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1924-1929), Mellon was his counterpart at the United States Treasury, and their debate and fierce differences of opinion about the handling of what Churchill called "the monstrous war debts" made frequent headlines on both sides of the Atlantic.
No mention of any of their five meetings are included in the official biographies of either man. Now these confrontations are brought to vivid life in Mellon vs. Churchill, as are many other vignettes from their very public, but largely forgotten, rivalry. Mellon vs. Churchill brings the reader inside the adventurous lives of these two great public figures—men who were not afraid to take huge risks to pursue their grand ambitions.
"Providing an enticing blow-by-blow of the debate, which spilled out into public, Eicher shows how it mixed with discussions about the proposed League of Nations and global unity. It's a fascinating perspective on the interwar period." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Of some interest to students of the historical interplay between geopolitics and international finance." —Kirkus Reviews
"This highly recommended, extensively researched work fills a gap in biographical information on Churchill and Mellon and presents a vivid account of interwar UK-U.S. Relations." —Library Journal
"Jill Eicher has written a fascinating account of a now forgotten chapter in the 'special relationship' between Great Britain and the US, the contentious negotiations over war debts in the aftermath of World War I, that pitted two of the grand figures of the inter-war world, Winston Churchill and Andrew Mellon, against each other. This is history as it should be written, full of the sort of revealing details drawn from contemporary accounts that make the past truly come alive." —Liaquat Ahamed, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lords of Finance
"Few historians can explain financial events clearly, while at the same time shedding new light on their main protagonists. Jill Eicher manages both these feats in her brilliantly researched and written study of Andrew Mellon and Winston Churchill at conflict over the honoring First World War debts." —David Lough, author of No More Champagne: Churchill and his Money
This information about Mellon vs. Churchill was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
After a career in investment management, Jill Eicher served at the U.S. Department of the Treasury as a specialist in credit risk and worked at the Bipartisan Policy Center as a financial policy analyst. She has been a visiting scholar at Stanford University and, most recently, at the International Churchill Society. Mellon vs. Churchill is her first book. She lives in Washington, DC.
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