The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World (Hardcover) by Niall Ferguson (Author)
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.
Frequently Bought Together
Customer Reviews
Money makes the world go round, by Amanda Barry
If you are like me, the recent financial crisis has forced you to rethink what money is, how it works, and how global economic trends affect when and how currency moves about. This timely book explains the origin and growth of money, banks, stock markets.
Ferguson shows us that the typical Wall Street logic of looking back the twenty or thirty years only the most experienced investors lived through is not enough to improve our current position. Ferguson says the only way to solve our financial crisis is to put the origin of money and financial strain in its proper historical context. It is far too late to be discussing expensive houses and cheap credit. We need to look way way back to understand the wreckage of banks, brokers and hedge funds that litters the markets. He shows us that looking back is the way to know what to do next. Otherwise, it’ll be another new bubble down the road that leaves us scratching our heads after it pops.
Read Ferguson’s book and you’ll better understand the possibilities for disaster inherent in the loose credit and securitization of bad debt from which so much money was made before the crisis unfolded. His grasp of history vindicates his profession and brings an understated beauty to money.
The other book I read this week that I also recommend very strongly is The Emotional Intelligence Quick Book. Let’s just say it makes it a little easier for me to watch the market, and in a little better mood around my husband when I come home from work
Financial Evolution…a Must Read, by Nathaniel Ritchison “CA CFP”
Ferguson has written a “must-read” book for anyone who enjoys history, finance, or who would like to put our current financial situation into the larger context of history. The genius of this book is that he focuses on the broad topics of the history of money. He doesn’t lose the reader in details when describing the evolution of money and the world’s financial systems. One of the things I most enjoyed was his use of the different components of our financial system to describe its evolution. All along the way Ferguson shares with the reader why certain nations were/ are more evolved than others, and shares a glance into the future.
Overall, a well written book that I highly recommend!
Thoroughly reserached and a comprehensive exploration of the world of money, by Big China Ben Wong
The Ascent of Money is an unique book and one of its kind. Brief in scope, yet manages to cover all the momentous moments in the history of the monetary and financial systems. Interesting stories in high details interwoven his exposition of the history of physical money, the metamorphosis of the monetary system, stock, bond and housing market, and the insurance industry. The Only grievance is the lack of glossary for many technical financial terms, which could be of trifle annoyance to the layperson. This is a definite read not only for people in the financial industry, but for anyone who wants to under the history of money and the world today we are living in today affected by “The Ascent of Money.”
The Ascent of Money and Similar Items
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
This sounds like a great read and not only that, a fascinating history lesson too. Might have to add this to my list of books to read.