Finance is the essential back-story of human history, according to Niall Ferguson, author of The Ascent of Money. This book will change your understanding of your own checking account, your insurance, stocks, bonds, bailouts, globalization, politics, and all wars –past, present, and future.
For four thousand years, from ancient Mesopotamia to Modern China, the ascent of money has been one of the key factors in human progress. Ferguson elucidates the extraordinary story of financial innovation, intermediation and integration that has helped humanity escape from the drudgery of agriculture. And yet, Planet Finance can never quite escape the gravitational pull of planet Earth, where human factors outweigh rational quantitative analysis, the probability of black swans, our propensity to veer from euphoria to despondency, the chronic inability to learn from our own history.
Ferguson is a great story teller, in print and in person. You can see him on the 2-hour documentary PBS has made of his tale, which was so successful it is coming back this spring as a 4-hour program.
But don’t skip the book. You will get a solid education from this Harvard business and history professor in how money and financial products evolved. By understanding why these things came to be, what problems th
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