The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World

Ferguson, Niall

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28,627 ratings by Goodreads

9781400110339: The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World

ISBN 10: 1400110335 ISBN 13: 9781400110339

Publisher: Tantor Audio, 2008

Bread, cash, dough, loot, 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 back story 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 also 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; and sooner or later greed flips into fear. And that is why, whether you're scraping by or rolling in it, there's never been a better time to understand the ascent of money.

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About the Author:

Niall Ferguson is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and the bestselling author of Paper and Iron and The House of Rothschild.

From AudioFile:

Who knew there was a financial subtext to MARY POPPINS? Niall Ferguson--apparently--who explains that the children's classic makes the important point about banking that a bank's success is based on a fragile faith. And it's that same faith--in coins, in paper, and now in virtual banking--that lets us believe that money exists even though we don't much see it anymore. Written before the current downturn, yet seeming to predict it, the book explains that the popping sound you hear is when the "belief bubble" bursts (and Ferguson profiles some massive bubble makers). Narrator Simon Prebble moves along this metaphysical history of dinero with command, authority, and a BBC accent. His tone and timing add an element of class to the project. It's sort of like sitting in on a really fab Oxford lecture. R.W.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award � AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

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