THE ASCENT OF MONEY FULL

Ferguson does his best to provide explanations, especially in footnotes, but it still makes for slow and difficult reading. It is amazing how much people could accomplish so quickly and efficiently in the days before modern telecommunication.Īs the book continues to the present-day financial scene, more esoteric terms begin to clutter Ferguson's vocabulary.

THE ASCENT OF MONEY FULL

However, he's right in saying that one of the major factors of the Revolution was economic, and I enjoyed hearing the full story. At this point, Ferguson once again veers too close to the thesis precipice. This is a marked contrast to the excesses of 18th century France, of course, which sparked the French Revolution. Ferguson mentions the rise of the Medicis, explaining how their decentralized approach to banking protected them from the weakness of any one man in power. My favourite part of The Ascent of Money concerns the financial history of the Renaissance.

Above all, it helped stress the interdependence of these various components they did not arise in a vacuum and they are still closely-linked today. I enjoyed this categorization scheme, and I think it worked better than a strict chronological organization would have. Hence, Ferguson treads over the same historical periods several times, but each time with fresh eyes. Each chapter is about some specific aspect of finances, such as the bond market, the stock market, mortgages, etc. The book follows a roughly chronological path, but only because Ferguson tackles components of the economy in increasingly complex order. Fortunately, Ferguson toned down the rhetoric after the introduction and instead focused on imparting and interpreting the facts. The Ascent of Money is an attempt to recount the wise of finance, beginning in Mesopotamia and ending in modern-day United States and Britain.Īs I began reading, I reacted with scorn to Niall Ferguson's intense introduction, thinking that this would be another one of those books where the author takes his pet thesis and tries to show that it is the real reason behind everything that's happened in history. So I set out to learn more about the economy the way we're told to learn about things in school: begin at the beginning. However, that's a very naive view to take, and not a particularly helpful one. If we disappeared, it would disappear (although its effects on the environment would remain). Long have I regarded the economy as a fickle, fictitious construct of humanity.

The ascent of money