SINEWS OF WAR
Money, Battle and the Building of America

SINEWS OF WAR: Money, Battle and the Building of America, is a three-part prime-time television series that focuses on the critically important but generally overlooked story of the financing of America’s most decisive wars.

Our story is about the financial engine that lay behind success on the battlefield; we also show how the modern American financial system was largely forged in the crucible of war.

Hosted by Andrew Tobias

"The sinews of war are infinite money." --Cicero

Hosted by best-selling writer Andrew Tobias, SINEWS is constructed around key turning points in the history of America at war.

We begin as the thirteen colonies prepared to pit their fledgling economy against the greatest economic superpower of the age. Our story ends in the 21st century, when the United States is a global superpower embarking on a war to end terrorism.

Our story is a deeply human one. Smuggling and counterfeiting, deprivation and labor unrest, corruption, destruction, and greed are all a part of the economic might and chaos of war and make up our narrative.

We meet pivotal but little known people (such as Robert Morris, "financier of the Revolution" who spent many of his last years in debtors’ prison); well-known characters rarely seen through the lens of wartime finance (such as Benjamin Franklin, who printed colonial currencies on his own presses), and "ordinary" people who shouldered war’s financial burden.

The story is important because it reveals an aspect of American history that is little understood at a popular level. It is also important because the themes we spotlight inform our present wartime situation.