'The Great Financial Crisis of 2007–2009 and the near financial meltdown at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic have made it vividly clear that our current financial system is woefully inadequate to address the massive problems we face. Thomas Marois has written a masterful book that convincingly argues that a major expansion in the role of public banks can provide long term, well-directed finance to speak to these major challenges. This is the definitive work on public banking that will be of enormous interest to practitioners, policy makers, economists, and others who are tired of just complaining about the failures of finance and who actually want to do something about it.' Gerald Epstein, Professor and Co-Director PERI, University of Massachusetts, Amherst