ALTHOUGH CALLED ‘PAPER money’, the US dollar is in fact a water-resistant mixture of linen and cotton, with coloured silk fibres running through it. The word ‘dollar’ comes from the thaler, a coin first made at the silver mines of Joachimsthal in Bohemia in 1519. Today there are seven trillion dollars in the world – most of which exist only electronically. Fourteen billion are the familiar green ‘bills’, or notes, and a third of these are held outside the United States. Thus ‘there are more dollar bills in existence than any other branded object, including Coke cans’.

Literary Review

Apr 2003

Categories

Christopher Ondaatje

Boldly Going

The Number of the Beast

At Least He Had A Conscience

An Island For One

You Give Me Fever

A Fine Young Cannibal

Of Mudaliyars and Men

Watching The River Flow

Trouble Brewing

She Had the Measure of His Manhood

Pictures From The Edge

In Search of Nomads: An English Obsession from Hester Stanhope to Bruce Chatwin

The Parson’s Pastime

Christopher Ondaatje Goes in Search of Leonard Woolf

Developing the Dark Continent

The One About the Chinese Condom Factory

The Potent Pod

The Time of the Bodysnatchers

Courting The Madonna

The Lure of the Peppercorn

Hate and Wait

First Contact

Meeting the Unknown

Between The Rock and a Hard Place