This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book brings together a set of scholars from seven disciplines—economics, anthropology, communication, sociology, political science, philosophy, and law—in order to document the multiple advances in monetary analysis and the changes in monetary forms. Drawing from a dazzling panoply of theories and empirical cases, the chapters illuminate money's past, present, and future. Along the way, the authors grapple with perennial questions but also confront novel dilemmas about money's constitution, its effects, and how we account for it. They address questions such as: What explains the multiple ways in which we use, give, or save money? Are the monies we exchange in our private transactions fundamentally different than those used to trade in financial and corporate markets? Under what conditions, to what extent, and how does the expansion of monetary exchanges transform the prevailing quality of social life?