WHETHER YOU‘RE SCRAPING BY ORROLLING IN IT, THERE‘S NEVERBEEN A BETTER TIME TO UNDERSTANDTHE ASCENT OF MONEYBREAD, CASH, DOUGH, LOOT: 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‘sthe chains of labor. But in The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is infact the foundation of human progress. What‘s more, he reveals financial history as theessential backstory behind all history. The evolution of credit and debt, in his view, wasas important as any technological innovation in the rise of civilization.
Like the stock market crash that ultimately caused the French Revolution, thelatest global financial crisis is about more than merely losing money. As Ferguson tracesthe crisis from Memphis, the bankruptcy capital of America, to Chongqing, the fastestgrowing financial center on earth, he offers bold and compelling new insights into therise-and fall not just of money but of Western power itself.