"Probably the first book that Hamilton absorbed was Malachy Postlethwayt's Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, a learned almanac of politics, economics, and geography that was crammed with articles about taxes, public debt, money, and banking. The dictionary took the form of two ponderous, folio-sized volumes, and it is touching to think of young Hamilton lugging them through the chaos of war. Hamilton would praise Postlethwayt as one of "the ablest masters of political arithmetic." 13 A proponent of manufacturing, Postlethwayt gave the aide-de-camp a glimpse of a mixed economy in which government would both steer business activity and free individual energies. In the pay book one can see the future treasury wizard mastering the rudiments of finance. "When you can get more of foreign coin, [the] coin for your native exchange is said to be high and the reverse low," Hamilton noted. 14 He also stocked his mind with basic information about the world: "The continent of Europe is 2600 miles long and 2800 miles broad"; 15 "Prague is the principal city of Bohemia, the principal part of the commerce of which is carried on by the Jews." 16 He recorded tables from Postlethwayt showing infant-mortality rates, population growth, foreign-exchange rates, trade balances, and the total economic output of assorted nations."