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Modern Money Theory (MMT) is a relatively new approach to macroeconomics that focuses on building an understanding of the operation of sovereign currency systems and on developing a policy framework based on that understanding. This article first summarises the main conclusions of MMT – the most important of which is that a nation that issues its own sovereign currency does not face financial or solvency constraints. We next trace the intellectual antecedents of MMT, which rest ‘on the shoulders of giants’. MMT revives the State Theory of Money (or Chartalism) and integrates it with a variety of heterodox approaches to macroeconomics, including the credit, circuitiste and endogenous approaches to money, the functional finance approach to budgeting, the financial instability hypothesis and the sectoral balances approach. Among those giants, MMT borrows from Knapp, Keynes, Innes, Schumpeter, Lerner, Minsky and Godley. This article shows how their theories have been integrated by MMT to provide a coherent approach to macroeconomic theory and policy. In the final section we summarise the main implications for policy-making.