Amidst the collapse of financial systems, one might look both to antiquity and to the early church to know whether, and what, guidelines were given on the basic practice of our contemporary international economic system, the making of money from money itself. Ihssen's monograph grapples with antique and late-antique attitudes regarding moneylending at interest, as well as with the interpretation of particular patristic sermons by St Basil and St Gregory of Nyssa. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 locate the brothers within the arc of Greek, Roman, and Jewish history regarding moneylending, and in the context of Greek Christian social teaching about the same. Chapters 1, 5, and 6 (about 35% of the book) enter the debate about particular sermons of Basil and Gregory treating usury. Although Ihssen has entered two fields with extensive antecedent literature, she commands the existing literature and advances both. In her foregrounding work, Ihssen attempts to extend the comprehensive treatment of money usury by four earlier scholars in particular: Robert P. Maloney, Justo L. González, Thomas Moser, and Ignaz Seipel. Chapter 2, ‘Usury in Greek and Roman Society’, begins with legal and historical evidence that destructively high rates of interest were a social problem by the time of Solon in Greece and a few centuries after that in Rome. Philosophical response came much later, and was largely negative towards the practice, with noted exceptions being Demosthenes, Cicero, and Seneca. Eastern Christian emperors continued proscriptions on usury in some form until at least the ninth century. Chapter 3, ‘Usury in Jewish and Christian Scripture’, highlights the ‘Deuteronomic Double-Standard’—the scriptural idea that interest could be charged to foreigners but not to fellow Israelites. Christian Scripture builds on Jewish concern for economic justice, eliminating insider–outsider distinctions altogether. The most interesting turn in the chapter is its support of G. S. Lutrell's surprising exegesis of Matt. 25:24–8, that the parable of the talents is not an injunction to wise use of God's gifts, but a straight denunciation of the hardness of those who loan at interest. Chapter 4, called ‘Greek Theologians and Usury’ in the table of contents but ‘Early Greek Fathers and Usury’ in the text itself (one of several small missed edits in the volume), recounts teachings on usury by Clement of Alexandria, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory the Theologian, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and most especially John Chrysostom, arguing that the double standard was defended by none of these Fathers.