Are there any good books on or about world coinage, not catalogues, but about certain issues, assayers, minters, or designers? If so, any recommendations? I know there are books on ancient coins, but I'm thinking more about post-medieval coinage.
Depends what you're interested in. There are many, many books on specific countries and issues. Also are you interested in highly technical discussions, historical information, fiction, or ????
What are you looking for? There are literally thousands, covering every single aspect of world numismatics in depth. There may be as many books on world coins as ancients.
One more thing I found reading hundreds of books about the only one type of coin: the best are these small books, about 50 -100 pages, describing only one small part of material (like coinage of one ruler or one mint) very detailed. You should also look for Yearbooks from countries of coinage you are interested in. Unfortunately, usually these yearbooks came in native language of these countries. Huge catalogues seems to be copied very often from one book to another, really. In comparison with these small brochures, huge leading books seems to be useless. I found also mistakes in books known as "the best in subject", probably nobody found time to check these information and compare with original mint notes or other literature. Probably main problem is when somebody is going to write about some coinage, he miss (or write only a shortcut of) whole important background to make book useful, I mean written in up to let's say 400 pages. Of course he saves a lot of his time with it, catalogue part is sometimes easier than description - depends on available literature and type of coinage described. I think missing background of coinage this is the biggest mistake possible in numismatic literature and I hope it will change. In literature about one type of coins it will change for sure When you buy some precious coin, you would like to read about it, even few pages in book. Unfortunately, it is usually 1 or 2 sentences. Not enough for sure.
