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The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
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
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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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
Michael
rated it
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review of another edition
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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 ...more
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 ...more
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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 Lef...more
karl
rated it
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review of another edition
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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
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 housi...more
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, al...more
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, al...more
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.
Given everything that is going on around us these days, this is an excellent read. Highly recommended.
Of all the books on the history of the financial markets that I have read this is probably the most complete and the most insightful. Niall Ferguson goes beyond a history of catastrophes and innovations and to make a compelling case against many of the naive assumptions that underpin the efficient market hypothesis.
The genius of this book is that Ferguson covers all of the broader and more significant aspects of the development of the financial markets without losing his readers in the detail...more
The genius of this book is that Ferguson covers all of the broader and more significant aspects of the development of the financial markets without losing his readers in the detail...more
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 structurean echo of the episodic, six-part television series it was meant to accompany. So it seems the UK critics lik
...more
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...more
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...more
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
Kirsti
rated it
·
review of another edition
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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...more
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...more
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
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
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 wo...more
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 unders...more
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 unders...more
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 o...more
The political and economic doctrines of the author are obvious in the reading of the book, as pointed out by o...more
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 pie...more
"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,...more
Cicero - 55 BC
So what have we learned in 2 Millennia? Evidently nothing?
Ferguson argued that financial markets are like the mirror of mankind,...more
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...more
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 ab...more
I was expecting The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson to be a lot like A Splendid Exchange: a history of trade around the world. Instead, it is much more narrowly a history of banking, centering on Western Europe and the U.S.
The author explains the banking system in chapters, starting with money itself, then moving on to bonds, joint stock and limited liability companies, insurance, real estate, hedge funds--all in increasing order of complication, until he gets to those newfangled and...more
The author explains the banking system in chapters, starting with money itself, then moving on to bonds, joint stock and limited liability companies, insurance, real estate, hedge funds--all in increasing order of complication, until he gets to those newfangled and...more
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 ...more
And this is a pity, as there are many things about money I would ...more
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 fin...more
Using statistics, analogies, and historical examples, Ferguson takes the reader on a dazzling tour of the last 500 years of fin...more
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
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 for...more
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 for...more
Niall Ferguson is a great historian-- his The Pity of War is about the best history of WW I extant --and so I was interested to see what he could do with the history of money. The answer is inconclusive. The book is actually a history of finance, particularly toward the end (i.e., modern times). It is surprisingly anecdotal, which does have the benefit of making it interesting. Ferguson's insights into certain historical events, and their consequences, are as usual very illuminating. I...more
Surprisingly readable history of money
Niall Ferguson offers a comprehensive collection of anecdotes and observations about the development of finance. He begins with a brief discussion of pre-money societies. Then, he carries you through the birth of banking in Renaissance Italy, the 18th-century Mississippi and South Sea bubbles, the role of Nathan Mayer Rothschild in the Napoleonic Wars, and the 20th-century transition from the Bretton Woods model to free-market derivatives and cur...more
Niall Ferguson offers a comprehensive collection of anecdotes and observations about the development of finance. He begins with a brief discussion of pre-money societies. Then, he carries you through the birth of banking in Renaissance Italy, the 18th-century Mississippi and South Sea bubbles, the role of Nathan Mayer Rothschild in the Napoleonic Wars, and the 20th-century transition from the Bretton Woods model to free-market derivatives and cur...more
Every time I pick up a Ferguson book, I am intimidated by its bulk. And every time I whip through it like butter, thanks to Ferguson's fluid and engaging prose. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the author brings us up to date as of May 2008, with insights into the root of our current financial crisis. As methodical as always, Ferguson starts with the history of cash and then steps us through debt, the stock market, insurance, property, and even manages to touch on the rarified world of hed...more
Narrated by Simon Prebble
11 hrs and 30 mins
Publisher's Summary
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 t...more
11 hrs and 30 mins
Publisher's Summary
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 t...more
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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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