As a result, it is both quite prescient about the causes of the current unraveling of the world financial system, and a bit out-of-date as so much has changed in the months since the book was published. This book was written in the earliest days of the current financial crisis, and completed sometime around May, 2008. And the origins of the French Revolution are traced back to a stock market bubble caused by a convicted Scot murderer.Ī mostly successful and interesting history The rise of the Dutch republic is reinterpreted as the triumph of the world's first modern bond market over insolvent Habsburg absolutism. 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. Through Ferguson's expert lens familiar historical landmarks appear in a new and sharper financial focus. What's more, he reveals financial history as the essential back story behind all history. But in The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. To revolutionaries, it's the chains of labor. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. 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.īread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the wherewithal: Call it what you like, it matters.

The ascent of money book review