Ludwig von Mises' The Theory of Money and Credit is, quite simply, one of the outstanding contributions to economic thought in the twentieth century. It came as the culmination and fulfillment of the "Austrian School" of economics, and yet, in so doing, founded a new school of thought of its own.
The Austrian School came as a burst of light in the world of economics in the 1870s and 1880s, serving to overthrow the classical, or Ricardian, system which had arrived at a dead end. This overthrow has often been termed the "marginal revolution," but this is a highly inadequate label for the new mode of economic thinking. The essence of the new Austrian paradigm was analyzing the individual and his actions and choices as the fundamental building block of the economy. Classical economics thought in terms of broad classes, and hence could not provide satisfactory explanations for value, price, or earnings in the market economy. The Austrians began with the actions of the individual. Economic value, for example, consisted of the valuations made by choosing individuals, and prices resulted from market interactions based on these valuations.