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A Story of Humanity
by David McWilliams
In this fresh, eye-opening global history, economist David McWilliams charts the relationship between humans and money―from clay tablets in Mesopotamia to cryptocurrency in Silicon Valley.
The story of humanity is inextricable from that of money. No innovation has defined our own evolution so thoroughly and changed the direction of our planet's history so dramatically. And yet despite money's primacy, most of us don't truly understand it.
As leading economist David McWilliams shows, money is central to every aspect of our civilization, from the political to the artistic. "Money defines the relationship between worker and employer, buyer and seller, merchant and producer. But not only that: it also defines the bond between the governed and the governor, the state and the citizen. Money unlocks pleasure, puts a price on desire, art and creativity. It motivates us to strive, achieve, invent and take risks. Money also brings out humanity's darker side, invoking greed, envy, hatred, violence and, of course, colonialism."
In The History of Money, McWilliams takes us across the world, from the birthplace of money in ancient Babylon to the beginning of trade along the Silk Road, from Marrakech markets to Wall Street. Along the way, we meet a host of innovators, emperors, frauds, and speculators, who have disrupted society and transformed the way we live. Filled with memorable anecdotes, and with a foreword by Michael Lewis, The History of Money is an essential, extremely readable history of humanity's most consequential invention.
"An absolute romp through history, with money—its uses and misuses—as the throughline." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Most economists do not really understand money… They take the fun out of it.' Thus begins Irish economist David McWilliams's rollicking ride through the pecuniary past. From the 20,000-year-old Ishango Bone (the first known accounting instrument) to today's M-Pesa (Kenya's mobile phone payments system), the reader is whisked at the speed of a Weimar printing press through the history of financial evolution. If Flann O'Brien and Milton Friedman had ever collaborated, this might have been the result. I was entertained. But I also learned." ―Niall Ferguson, author of The Ascent of Money
"It's a crime, it can't buy me love, it's the root of all evil, it makes the world go around, it's what I want. Money has long been the subject of song and sayings. And now, at last, we have The History of Money: a clear and endlessly fascinating explanation of what this is all about and how it all works." ―Steven Pinker, Harvard University, author of When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows…
This information about The History of Money was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
David McWilliams is a former central bank economist based In Dublin. He hosts The David McWilliams Podcast and is the founder of the world's only economics and stand-up comedy festival, "Kilkenomics," described by the Financial Times as "simply, the best economics conference in the world." McWilliams also writes a weekly column for The Irish Times and is adjunct professor of global economics at Trinity College Dublin.
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