If pennies and nickels are largely useless, why does the U.S. Mint continue to manufacture them? In this excerpt from The End of Money: Counterfeiters, Preachers, Techies, Dreamers—and the Coming Cashless Society, out this week, David Wolman investigates why eliminating the penny is problematic.

In the Victorian ballroom of the Charing Cross Hotel in London, the thirteenth annual Digital Money Forum is wrapping up with a session of free beer and wine. Beneath brass chandeliers, people from the worlds of banking, telecom, academia, and international development have absorbed an entire weekend’s worth of talk about money in the form of bits and bytes, and tomorrow’s technologies for handling [...]

"Marlene Dietrich once said that if she heard an American man rave about a meal, she knew he must have eaten a steak," says A Treasury of Great Recipes. Published in 1965, the book was written by Vincent and Mary Price (yes, that Vincent Price, or that one, maybe you remember). Price drops the quote in a section on great New York restaurants. And it’s not just the American men who thought this (though more on that below): restaurant critic Ruth Reichl in a 1994 steakhouse round-up wrote, “But there is one thing I have no doubt about: steak is a New York tradition, and when I [...]

You do not need the ghost of Andy Rooney to remind you that, if traveling by automobile is a big chocolate cake of frustration, then the tolls that may be collected from you are the frosting. These tolls are such an annoyance (if not an outright burden) that they're avoided as a topic by even the most amateur of our stand-up comics. And of the costs that are difficult to avoid in the day-to-day, these are definitely increasing, right? Increases mount, and what was once an afterthought, tossing some change into a basket, is now an expense to be reckoned with.

But even if we all agree that, yes, [...]

“Candy may be dandy…” Actually, that is not true. Candy is at all times dandy, and all of us can testify to that: we were children once, and young. When I was ten I’d bike down to the Open Pantry, and if there was allowance left over after comic books, I’d grab a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup for a quarter (and, if in a shrewd frame of mind, not eat it directly but throw it in the freezer back home). It was a tiny luxury, only two bits.

Now, 30 years later, with childhood more perilous than ever (what with the confusion over the aims of Occupy Wall Street, and [...]

One thing aspirin is not: polarizing. If you are going to have a tiff with a friend, aspirin will not be the topic. Aspirin is actually a great unifier—it’s one of the sundries that can be found in every home across the country. Aspirin is easy to find, and it is here to help. With all sorts of things, of course, but between you and me, mostly hangovers. And people who are paranoid of incipient heart disease, they also are big aspirin fans.

Perhaps you yourself are one of those people who overindulge in the bendy elbows and/or quiet fears of your own mortality. So let’s [...]

Who read Warren Buffett's homework assignment to the U.S. today, in the Times? Because I am suspicious, I always think: "How does publication of this benefit the world's best investor?" Let us translate what he is saying.