The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World

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The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World

3.8 of 5 stars 3.80 · rating details · 6,536 ratings · 653 reviews

A richly original look at the origins of money and how it makes the world go ?round

Niall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of our financial system, from its genesis in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals on what he calls Planet Finance. What?s more, Ferguson reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all histor...more

Paperback, 448 pages

Published October 27th 2009 by Penguin Books (first published October 30th 2008)

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Dec 03, 2008 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ferguson is known as an economic historian yet his last few books were almost purely historical, with only brief passages on the economic aspects of historical events. Here, Ferguson returns to telling about, well, not so much economics as the evolution of finance. First money, then banks, then bonds, then equities, derivatives, insurance, and finally the causes of the recent credit crunch are explained and developed in simple and clear prose. Unlike 'War of the World' - a mammoth retelling of t...more

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Sep 29, 2011 Marc Weidenbaum added it · review of another edition

The book is titled The Ascent of Money, but it's not about the ascent of money. It's about the path of money, with the assumption that from the origin of the book's historical perspective, money has been the bedrock of civilization. There's no ascendancy, because there is nothing for it to compete with, in the author's telling. What the book really is is a straight history of the above-board financial markets, and to that extent it's a useful and largely enjoyable read, covering the move from ba...more The book is titled The Ascent of Money, but it's not about the ascent of money. It's about the path of money, with the assumption that from the origin of the book's historical perspective, money has been the bedrock of civilization. There's no ascendancy, because there is nothing for it to compete with, in the author's telling. What the book really is is a straight history of the above-board financial markets, and to that extent it's a useful and largely enjoyable read, covering the move from barter to coin, and from coin to virtual funds, and from virtual funds to algorithmic trading. The author does a wonderful job of jumping across vast time periods to draw comparisons (showing how even if technology changes, human nature does not). He does a terrible job of telling jokes, which comes across as a sort of nervous habit (mostly alliteration, puns, and pop-culture references), one that someone close to him should point out to him.

The absence of under-the-counter financial markets and their influence on, their substantial part of, the global economy seems like a significant blind spot. There are occasional asides to the Mafia, narco states, and the like, and of course when Ponzi schemes come to light they are acknowledged. But that's it. As such, it's sort of like this: if The Ascent of Money were a study of a city, it would only take stock (so to speak) of the goings on within buildings and institutions, and not of street life. In other words, it's not a full picture. It's like a Chamber of Commerce picture. (One other seeming blind spot: if I'm not mistaken, the author seems to have a disinclination toward companies that are not publicly traded.)

Also: I cannot recall reading a non-fiction book recently with less of a thesis. There is no overarching theme, no consciously enacted perspective, just the steady march of economic history proceeding like a fleshed-out timeline. I'd say most fiction I read has more of a thesis, more of a sense of perspective on the world, than this book does.

To be clear, there is a concluding section in which the correlations between biological evolution and monetary-system change is compared. But in effect what has happened is that after dropping occasional references to such a metaphor throughout the book, he then tries to tie it all together. In other words, the equation to produce this book was: write a history of (largely western) economics at a (largely) macro level, and then add a final chapter proposing a model, supported only by parenthetical references in the majority of the book. A comparison is not a thesis, especially when the comparison feels added on. Furthermore, the evolution metaphor is seriously sloppy. For a widely traveled professor at Harvard, he has created a loose-at-best metaphor with a floating subject that changes according to the need of his rhetoric, on a moment by moment, sentence by sentence basis: Has money ascended, like man is said to have? Has the nature of business? Has the market? If, as the author states, complex technological innovations haven't actually supplanted earlier modes like barter and loan sharks, then how can the comparison to mankind be made? Are we humans surrounded by our own competing ancestors? And if in fact this is about an ecological comparison, and not a one-on-one to mankind, then why not just say so? Because comparisons to man allow for the idea of the free market having a rational hive-mind sentience? Because The Ascent of Man sounds like a better logline than The Ecology of Money? It's altogether unclear. If after this much effort a book's thesis cannot be plainly stated, then it does not have one. What it has is a paper wrapper.

And as a side note, I may be mistaken, but the book seems to clarify when an economist is left-leaning but not when right-leaning. And the fact that George Soros and several other figures in finance are Jewish is pointed out, but no other religion is listed with any particular frequency when other major figures are mentioned.

One final thing: There is an anecdote about the film Mary Poppins early in the book that I highly recommend reading. I can't do it justice, but in brief: the author was invited to speak at a business event, and since the tone of his talk was somewhat negative about the economic short term and midterm, several of the attendees (all successful business-people) complained afterword, essentially taking issue with the presence of a non-businessperson, especially one deemed not enough of an optimistic booster). One of these complaints stated that they should have ditched him and just shown the movie Mary Poppins. The author then takes the opportunity to point out the extent to which Mary Poppins' plot rests on the instability of British banks.
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Mar 15, 2011 Qi Zeng rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance".
Cicero - 55 BC

So what have we learned in 2 Millennia? Evidently nothing?

Ferguson argued that financial markets are like the mirror of mankind, revealing the works of how we function in...more

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Jun 02, 2009 Michael rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: those ruined by any sort of market discontinuity

Yay for empire!

Another book from the vaguely centrist right, you know them, those economists and Greek translators and philosophers from the University of Chicago who assisted Pinochet in his fascist coup, won Nobel Prizes, misconstrued Plato to fit their world-view (I'm looking at you, Leo Strauss), and finally, today, when they are primarily involved in teaching a new generation to do the same things.

Well, Ferguson perhaps isn't so vehemently rabid about his political beliefs, and he doesn't...more Yay for empire!

Another book from the vaguely centrist right, you know them, those economists and Greek translators and philosophers from the University of Chicago who assisted Pinochet in his fascist coup, won Nobel Prizes, misconstrued Plato to fit their world-view (I'm looking at you, Leo Strauss), and finally, today, when they are primarily involved in teaching a new generation to do the same things.

Well, Ferguson perhaps isn't so vehemently rabid about his political beliefs, and he doesn't teach in Chicago. But he is their counterpart: the British free-trader. Only he has something the Chicago boys don't: that very old and very British urge to colonize those who have defaulted on their debts. We who are not so verse in financial lingo tend to call this imperialism, a much more effective imperialism because so incredibly beneficial to those who have the most to gain.

Ferguson does a very good job of making economic theory as understandable as possible (which means that I understood and could possibly recall about 30% of those unyielding financial terms and theories). It's an excellent day when intelligent historians do not stoop to "our" level to be understood: Ferguson makes his point without relying on that pitfall of historical writing: making history uncomplicated.

And yet, oh, and yet. The closest thing to socially adept you're going to get here is the gold standard, which by any standard (including its own) is a dangerous illusion of stability. And don't even think for a minute that Ferguson will even mention the naughty word "labor" as applied to a working force. He does his best to put a pretty, imperial British mask over his rough, working-class Scottish face, but for all his talk of bubbles and busts and liquidity and illiquidity and real estate and S & L, you have to wonder: is it possible that something so vacuous as a number on a screen can define us, politically, culturally, and spiritually? It's kind of a scary predicament, and _The Ascent of Money_ not only sets out to prove that this is true, it also aspires to show that "Planet Finance" is an evolutionary process, almost as evolutionary as evolution itself, with a little more ideology thrown in. The last chapter "Chimerica" is one reason to read the book (or at least that chapter) as it portrays a clear-sighted analysis of the US-China situation, which is becoming more intricate and dangerous each day.

It is a minor but slightly important book, more about finance than financial history. Then again, maybe finance is financial history.

I think it's time for some Naomi Klein.

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Oct 18, 2008 Roger Cottrell added it · review of another edition

I was recently referred to this book by Goodreads friend Roz, who didn't know that I'd already read it. For those who don't know Ferguson he's a prolific but right wing historian who is a regular face on British TV's channel 4 with series like EMPIRE, AMERICAN COLLOSUS and THE THIRD WORLD WAR. I don't agree with Ferguson's project, particularly his defence of Thatcher, but his histories pose important questions even though they lack a central Marxist focus on class. Ergo, attempts by many Left w...more

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Mar 26, 2009 karl rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Econ faculty to add to their syllabus as recommended reading

Solid research (lots of footnotes), almost too much detailed stats at some points, and excellent writing (e.g., short sentences) are the strength of this book. It reads similar to a somewhat disparate collage of econ/finance/policy articles from the Economist, or the New Yorker, or Times. That takes a star off for me. There might be a lot of attention to Long Term Capital, Hurricane Katrina, professor DeSoto's work in Peru and South America, British landowners in the 1800's, and the poor in Detr...more

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Feb 01, 2009 Miguel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Engaging book, although it does not add much to the TV documentary, which is available through the PBS website and also on YouTube. However, I was sufficiently impressed by the book and a couple of his essays in Vanity Fair that I plan to read more of Ferguson's work. I ordered the "Cash Nexus" and, maybe, if I have a long illness, I'll also read his book on the Rothschilds. A brilliant man, though perhaps a trifle self-aggrandizing. He claims, for instance, to have predicted the housing collaps...more

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Jun 09, 2009 Tao rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a very readable and enjoyable financial history for a layman like me. Like most of the members of the general public, generally I have no interest in financial history, considering it complicated, mundane, boring and dry. However, the recently financial meltdown piqued my interest on this topic.

This book described the development of modern finance and banking system, staring from Renaissance Italy, the Medici family, the rising of the Rothschild family after the Waterloo, all the way do...more

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Jan 10, 2009 Andrew rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: business, history

The is a very interesting take on the role of money in world history. Ferguson tracks the evolution of the financial world right up to the present economic crisis. He writes very well and weaves in how other historic events were triggered or enabled by changes in how money works. Even if one challenges some of the opinions in the book, it is very thought provoking.

Given everything that is going on around us these days, this is an excellent read. Highly recommended.

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Niall Ferguson makes a strong, compelling case for the development of money and banking as a catalyst for the advancement of civilization. Yet while some critics praised his clear, comprehensible writing, punctuated with anecdotes and historical details, others were nonplussed by his explanations and narrative detours. Several critics also bemoaned the book's choppy and uneven structure

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Feb 01, 2009 Deirdre rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Money's money, right? Wrong. My sister told me that "Life is like a sh*t sandwich, the more bread you have the less sh*t you eat." (True unless you're Sunny Von Bulow.)

Niall Ferguson focuses his history of the world on its finances. He succeeds in explaining the origins, evolution, and present state of currency, bonds, stocks, insurance, property, and financial wizardry. There's plenty I still don't know, but looking at the world through the prism of money usually explains a lot. And while Karl...more

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Mar 13, 2013 Mike W rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The subtitle of this book is "A Financial History of the World" and it certainly does not live up to that billing. It is more like a collection of a few important episodes in financial history, including the conquest of the New World by Spaniards in pursuit of gold, the rise of the Medici, the enormous financial power accumulated by the Rothschilds, the destruction wrought by John Law in the Mississippi Bubble, the Great Depression and the recent financial crisis.

As other reviewers have noted, t...more

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Oct 10, 2012 David rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: challenging-ideas, economics, history, ideas, popular-culture

This is one of my favourite books, so what that says about me, I'll leave you to decide.
Money is an important part of life, and is taught in schools in terms of mathematics, economics and history.
This book exams why and how money was created, the way it has changed, and many aspects of it's use in our lives. The wheeling and dealing that makes the economy such a snake pit is shown to have causes and previous examples in history. We don't always seem to learn from our mistakes, but sometimes we...more

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Sep 20, 2012 Abbe added it · review of another edition

Shelves: in-library

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, itas the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, itas the chains of labor. But in "The Ascent of Money," Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in f...more 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, itas the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, itas the chains of labor. But in "The Ascent of Money," Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. Whatas more, he reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all history. Through Fergusonas 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 worldas 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? Whatas 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 canat 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 worldas biggest countries, India and China, from poverty to wealth in the space of a single generationaan economic transformation unprecedented in human history. Yet the central lesson of the financial history is that sooner or later every bubble burstsasooner or later the bearish sellers outnumber the bullish buyers, sooner or later greed flips into fear. And thatas why, whether youare scraping by or rolling in it, thereas never been a better time to understand the ascent of money.(less)

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Jun 09, 2012 Eva rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: did-not-finish

This started out promising, but when the book started talking about the history of bonds as source of war funds in Europe during the 1400's or whatever, I was quickly done. Some kindle quotes from before I gave up:

Read this book and you will understand why, paradoxically, the people who live in the world’s safest country are also the world’s most insured. - location 71

The theme of my speech was that it would not take much to cause a drastic decline in the liquidity that was then cascading throug...more

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May 23, 2012 Tim rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is full of information and anecdotes bringing to life the nature of money of all kinds. Money with the gold standard paper money and money brought into existence via banking. Even if you don't agree with with his conclusions, which i don't, there's a lot of good information here. I'm glad I read it.

Despite that, this is a serverly flawed book:

1) Weak Thesis

However, his evolution of finance thesis (that finance evolves from loan-shark lending to a more just form of lending - and that t...more

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Mar 31, 2012 Stephen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Money makes the world go 'round. In today's globalized economy, this is a statement that's never been more true. Considering the importance of trade in human history, writing a financial history of the world seems like a staggering challenge, especially considering how dense and complex the language of high finance is. How many average people can read the newspaper coverage of the financal crash in 2008, or of the crisis in Europe, and really understand it? Niall Ferguson attempts to address ave...more

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Jan 11, 2012 David rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

One helluva an experience reading this book. I put it off for a couple of years figuring economics was plain boring and that was a mistake. Ferguson is brilliant in how he lays out the financial history of the world and brings so much relevance of what is happening today. The only sad part is that the book ends in February 2008 and so much worse things have happened now. Oddly he commented how public money was needed to save the banks and now the EU is in jeopardy of collapse. I guess the circle...more

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Dec 18, 2011 Kirsti rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: anger, business, cake-eaters, drama, hissy-fits, history, mayhem, greed, nervous-breakdowns, nonfiction, ooooh-the-future, politics, practical-stuff, scotland, true-crime

I was listening to this audiobook on a CD player, and my husband said, "Is a man with a plummy English accent explaining the plot of Mary Poppins to you?" (Yes. You may not remember the part where the little boy wants tuppence to feed the pigeons and inadvertently triggers a bank run.)

Harvard history professor explains the origins of not only coins, paper money, and electronic money, but also stocks, bonds, and insurance. (Bonds and insurance are way more important than I had realized.) Very hel...more

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Oct 17, 2011 Christopher rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history

Another tour de force of world history, this time focusing on financial history, a topic that everyone who has been hit in some way by the current recession should be looking into. Once again going against the grain, Ferguson argues that money and the subsequent institutions and promissory notes that have been used to save or create more money are the keys to national wealth and expansion, not their destruction. In fact, whenever he traces the rise and fall of vast fortunes throughout history, i...more

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Sep 15, 2011 Jan Hidders rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Excellent book if you want to understand how finance got its all-important role in the world today, from Sumerian clay tablets representing tradable IOUs up to the recent financial crisis. Niall Ferguson manages to do this in an understandable and accessible way that is at the same time also very entertaining, compelling and filled with fun anecdotes. I especially like the slightly irreverential and provocative tone that he maintains while demystifying the "secrets" of the financial world. In my...more

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Sep 02, 2011 Meg rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Following 'Empire of Wealth' I decided to try and grow my knowledge a little bit on the subject of finance. Having greatly enjoyed Niall Fergesun's previous work, I thought this would be a great way to go. And, in essence, it was.

However, what this book doesn't tell you is that it's written for someone with a much higher understanding of global finance than I currently posess. I'm a financial and economic newbie, having only read Empire of Wealth and little else to increase my understanding of t...more

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Aug 08, 2011 Juan-Pablo rated it 2 of 5 stars

I expected this book to give a good insight (as opposed to a comprehensive history due to its length) on how the monetary and financial systems developed throughout history. It is instead a series of historical anecdotes thematically combined on each chapter. Some of them are really informative (the ascent of the Rothschilds), others are downright superficial and inaccurate.

The political and economic doctrines of the author are obvious in the reading of the book, as pointed out by other reviews...more

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Jul 10, 2011 Bryce rated it 4 of 5 stars

A very interesting read. The historical aspects of this book are excellent, especially for those of us who have trouble speaking "banker". In many ways the book reads like several historical vignettes about the development of important elements of the financial system (with the obligatory nod the British Empire present in all his books). Each historical chapter is interesting and a relatively fast engrossing read. Ferguson uses the 2007/8 "Great Recession" to tie all the pieces together and in d...more

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Jan 12, 2011 Tony rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history

Ferguson, Niall. THE ASCENT OF MONEY: A Financial History of the World. (2008). ****. Ferguson is a Professor History at Harvard, a Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has written other popular histories dealing with money and finance, including a history of the House of Rothschild. In this book he offers us a reasoned history of trade, money and the financial institutions and processes which have grown up around...more

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Jan 26, 2010 Dennis O'Brien rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

For those of us who never took an economics course in college this is a great book. Its scope seems overly ambitious (a history of the world as told through money and finance), but it in fact tells exactly that story, and while there are some necessarily broad strokes at times, the book does not shy away from getting into the gritty details when necessary. It certainly demands some attentive reading when it delves into some of the more complicated concepts of the late 20th century financial abst...more

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Sep 17, 2009 Trevor rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: economics, history, social-theory

Life has a habit of proving me wrong. Recently I wrote a review of The Drunkard's Walk How Randomness Rules Our Lives and said something like you generally get a better understanding of a subject if you can see the historical path that has been followed in building the subject in the first place. This book is all historical path, but it has left me without a clearer understanding of what I had hoped to learn from it.

And this is a pity, as there are many things about money I would like a deeper u...more

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Aug 01, 2009 David rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

How does the Spanish quest for gold explain inflation? What role did cotton bonds play in the fall of the Confederacy (and Britain's conquest of Egypt)? Why are squatters in third world countries sitting on $9 trillion in property assets? If any of these questions are even mildly interesting to you, then you ought to read Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money.

Using statistics, analogies, and historical examples, Ferguson takes the reader on a dazzling tour of the last 500 years of financial histo...more

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Jul 30, 2009 Selina rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

While it certainly added some things to my understanding of finance, I was left unsatisfied with the anglo-american bias of this book. I felt the author wrote too much on the 'ways people can play with money' rather than the dire consequences of what happens when people risk too much. Yes, we get the picture of Chonqing before it becomes a financial powerhouse (shanty town to sleek skyscrapers) and empty wastlands of unfinished housing in Texas but nothing is mentioned of African countries who a...more

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Jul 09, 2009 Erik rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

First, a complaint: This is hardly a history of monetary forms and use. Although Ferguson does discuss some of this early on in his book, everything after the first chapter is devoted to monetary policies and practices, and the rise of capitalism since the Renaissance.

One of Ferguson’s driving points is made early on, and is repeated throughout his book. That is, he vehemently and persuasively argues that capitalism – to riff Churchill’s critique of democracy – may be a horrible form of economi...more First, a complaint: This is hardly a history of monetary forms and use. Although Ferguson does discuss some of this early on in his book, everything after the first chapter is devoted to monetary policies and practices, and the rise of capitalism since the Renaissance.

One of Ferguson’s driving points is made early on, and is repeated throughout his book. That is, he vehemently and persuasively argues that capitalism – to riff Churchill’s critique of democracy – may be a horrible form of economics, but it is the best we have so far in the course of human history. He eloquently states that

"Credit and debt, in short, are among the building blocks of economic development, as vital to creating wealth of nations as mining, manufacturing or mobile telephony. Poverty, by contrast, is seldom directly attributable to the antics of rapacious financiers. It often has more to do with the lack of financial institutions, with the absence of banks, not their presence."

Much to his credit, Ferguson is right on the mark when you consider the predatory lending practices of fly-by-night banks, mortgage companies, and – the worst offender of them all – pay-day loan sharks.

Ferguson peppers his book with numerous scandals and historical characters that illustrate the precariousness of capitalism as it developed out of the wreckage of feudal Europe: Confederate cotton bonds, the Rothschild banking family, John Law’s Mississippi Company, Enron and Kenneth Lay, Milton Friedman, the Savings and Loan scandals and Danny Faulkner, mortgage practices after WWII that were effectively racist against blacks, NINJA loans in recent years (No income, no job or assets), and the list goes on.

While an advocate of capitalism at its best, Ferguson doesn’t shy away from blasting out of the water the notion that capitalism is Darwinian in nature, by allowing the best and fittest to survive.

"There is…a big difference between nature and finance. Whereas evolution in biology takes place in the natural environment, where change is essentially random (hence Richard Dawkins’s image of the blind watchmaker), evolution in financial services occurs within a regulatory framework where – to borrow a phrase from anti-Darwinian creationists – ‘intelligent design’ plays a part. Sudden changes in the macroeconomic environment, which are analogous to environmental changes in the natural world. The difference is once again that there is an element of endogenity in regulatory changes, since those responsible are often poachers turned gamekeepers, with a good insight into the way that the private sector works. The net effect, however, is similar to climate change on biological evolution. New rules and regulations can make previously good traits suddenly disadvantageous. The rise and fall of Savings and Loans, for example, was due in large measure to changes in the regulatory environment in the United States."

Or, in simpler words, once a regulatory system is functioning profitably, the sharks and poachers will find a way to manipulate the loopholes and suck the system dry. (Think Enron and, more recently, the notorious Bernard Madoff.) Regulation should be just as dynamic as capitalism itself; with constant reevaluation of practices and policies.

Although there were a few parts that were utterly baffling – most notably Black and Scholes “quants” formula for determining stock option pricing – Ferguson’s writing is clear and his examples concrete and well-illustrated. For a general survey of the history of real estate, bonds, stock markets, investment practices (especially the recent advent of collateralized debt obligations that precipitated our recent economic recession), The Ascent of Money can’t be beat.
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About Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson (born April 18, 1964, in Glasgow) is a British (Scottish) historian who specialises in financial and economic history as well as the history of empire. He is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and the William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He was educated at the private Glasgow Academy in Scotland, and at Magdal...more

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Books by Niall Ferguson

Empire: How Britain Made The Modern World

The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West

Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire

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