The Square and the Tower: Networks, Hierarchies and the Struggle for Global Power

Ferguson Niall

ISBN 10: 0241298989 / ISBN 13: 9780241298985

Published by Allen Lane, 2017

About this Item

Supports Goodwill of Silicon Valley job training programs. The cover and pages are in Good condition! Any other included accessories are also in Good condition showing use. Use can include some highlighting and writing, page and cover creases as well as other types visible wear.

Seller Inventory # GWSVV.0241298989.G

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Square and the Tower: Networks, Hierarchies and the Struggle for Global Power
• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Publication Date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0241298989
• ISBN 13: 9780241298985
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: good

About this title

Synopsis

What if everything we thought we knew about history was wrong? From the global bestselling author of Empire, The Ascent of Money and Civilization, this is a whole new way of looking at the world.

Most history is hierarchical: it's about popes, presidents, and prime ministers. But what if that's simply because they create the historical archives? What if we are missing equally powerful but less visible networks-leaving them to the conspiracy theorists, with their dreams of all-powerful Illuminati?

The twenty-first century has been hailed as the Networked Age. But in The Square and the Tower Niall Ferguson argues that social networks are nothing new. From the printers and preachers who made the Reformation to the freemasons who led the American Revolution, it was the networkers who disrupted the old order of popes and kings. Far from being novel, our era is the Second Networked Age, with the computer in the role of the printing press.

Those looking forward to a utopia of interconnected 'netizens' may therefore be disappointed. For networks are prone to clustering, contagions, and even outages. And the conflicts of the past already have unnerving parallels today, in the time of Facebook, Islamic State and Trumpworld.

About the Author

Niall Ferguson is one of Britain's most renowned historians. He is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a senior fellow of the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, and a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing. His books include The House of Rothschild, Empire, The War of the World, The Ascent of Money, The Great Degeneration and Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist. His many prizes include the Benjamin Franklin Prize for Public Service (2010), the Hayek Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2012) and the Ludwig Erhard Prize for Economic Journalism (2013).