"More than one young scholar, considering Byzantine numismatics as a field of study, has abandoned the thought after surveying the chaotic state of knowledge, and the depressing state of the coins, from the post-Macedonian period. To anyone familiar with the material, Mr. Michael Hendy has obviously accomplished a major miracle in putting order into what had been nothing but dismal chaos. . . . [He] has achieved a revolution not only in Byzantine numismatics but in mediaeval economic history." James D. Breckenridge, American Journal of Archaeology