Books › The ascent of money
The ascent of money
560 pages
An expansive, eye-opening journey that reveals the invisible financial scaffolding holding up human history.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like putting on a pair of X-ray glasses that suddenly reveal the hidden structural forces shaping human civilization. It moves with a brisk, confident energy, sweeping you from ancient Mesopotamian clay tablets to the dizzying heights of modern hedge funds without ever losing its narrative momentum. The mood is deeply intellectual yet highly accessible, creating a constant stream of aha moments as familiar historical events are reframed through the lens of credit, debt, and human irrationality. The prose is sharp, witty, and authoritative, demystifying complex financial concepts into gripping human drama. It will thoroughly delight big-history buffs and curious minds who want to understand the invisible, often precarious, architecture of our modern world.
- Mood
- intellectual
- expansive
- illuminating
- sobering
- Tone
- authoritative
- analytical
- engaging
- erudite
- wry
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- the mechanics of power · human irrationality · the evolution of trust · boom and bust cycles · the architecture of society
- The writing
- Energetic and lucid, effortlessly translating dense economic theory into gripping historical storytelling.
- The arc
- Begins with sweeping historical curiosity and builds to a sobering, clear-eyed understanding of modern systemic fragility.
- Who it's for
- Curious minds who love big-history narratives and want to peek behind the curtain of global power dynamics.
Content notes
- historical warfare
- financial ruin
- discussions of slavery
About the book
Niall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of finance, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals on what he calls Planet Finance.Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the wherewithal: Call it what you like, it matters. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it's the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, it's the chains of labor. But in The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. What's more, he reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all history.Through Ferguson's expert lens familiar historical landmarks appear in a new and sharper financial focus. Suddenly, the civilization of the Renaissance looks very different: a boom in the market for art and architecture made possible when Italian bankers adopted Arabic mathematics. The rise of the Dutch republic is reinterpreted as the triumph of the world's first modern bond market over insolvent Habsburg absolutism. And the origins of the French Revolution are traced back to a stock market bubble caused by a convicted Scot murderer.With the clarity and verve for which he is known, Ferguson elucidates key financial institutions and concepts by showing where they came from. What is money? What do banks do? What's the difference between a stock and a bond? Why buy insurance or real estate? And what exactly does a hedge fund do?This is history for the present. Ferguson travels to post-Katrina New Orleans to ask why the free market can't provide adequate protection against catastrophe. He delves into the origins of the subprime mortgage crisis.Perhaps most important, The Ascent of Money documents how a new financial revolution is propelling the world's biggest countries, India and China, from poverty to wealth in the space of a single generation—an economic transformation unprecedented in human history.Yet the central lesson of the financial history is that sooner or later every bubble bursts—sooner or later the bearish sellers outnumber the bullish buyers, sooner or later greed flips into fear. And that's why, whether you're scraping by or rolling in it, there's never been a better time to understand the ascent of money.
Description from Open Library.
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