The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World [Paperback]

Niall Ferguson (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Bookmarks Magazine

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 structure—an echo of the episodic, six-part television series it was meant to accompany. So it seems the UK critics liked the book less because they had seen the show. Though perhaps best suited to readers with a fundamental understanding of financial terms and theories, Ferguson's latest work provides valuable insight into the inner workings of the global economy, past and present. For interested readers, it demonstrates how our current fiscal meltdown fits into the bigger historical picture and laments humanity's perennial inability to learn from this history.
Copyright 2009 Bookmarks Publishing LLC --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* British historian Ferguson follows Empire (2003), his provocative take on British history, and his equally provocative take on the American “empire” in Colossus (2004), with a not so much provocative as fresh look at the history of money and its ramifications on how modern life has evolved, since to him “money is the root of most progress.” One of his basic premises cannot be argued with: most people in the English-speaking world are woefully ignorant of things financial. To that end, Ferguson, in his desire to educate the general public, presents the history of money within these contexts: the rise of money and the history of credit, and the histories of the bond market, the stock market, insurance, the real-estate market, and international finance. There is an ease to his prose that leaves this complicated subject interesting to and approachable by any general reader. For the history and social-science side of the public library business collection. --Brad Hooper --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics); 1ST edition (October 27, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9861735844
• ISBN-13: 978-0143116172
• ASIN: 0143116177
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (162 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,068 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

  #4 in	Books > Business & Investing > Economics > Economic History
  #3 in	Books > History > Historical Study > Social History
  #9 in	Books > History > World

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

215 of 248 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Financial Subplot, November 15, 2008

By	Izaak VanGaalen (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World (Hardcover)

Niall Ferguson has written an easily accessible and very entertaining history of finance, ranging from the clay tokens of Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago to the hedge funds of today. The title of this book has apparently been modelled on Jacob Bronowski's "The Ascent of Man," and like that book it will be made into a television series. Being a television celebrity is not something that wins the admiration of one's peers in the history profession, to say the least. But those little rebukes are relatively mild compared to the scorn he received for his political views in Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power and Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire. In those works he argued that empire was beneficial not only to the mother country but the dominated countries as well. In this work he chronicles not only the history of money but also makes a case for liberalized finance.

Ferguson examines the financial subplot behind some of the major historical powers such as the role of money in ancient Mesopotamia, the denarius in Roman society, and gold and silver in the civilization of the Incas. He is very good in his descriptions of financial families like the Medicis and the Rothchilds, and how they became banking dynasties. Another memorable episode was the rise of Amsterdam as the world's financial center and the center's subsequent shift to London.

History is also filled with financial disasters of which we are well aware today. Ferguson tells the story of John Law and how he became France's head of finance. He engineered a financial bubble that took them several generations to overcome. Making matters worse, it occurred at the same time as the British South Sea Bubble.

Also instructive is the history of the first great globalization (1870-1914). (For this period also read Jeffrey Frieden's Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century.) The world had become so economically interdependent that the pundits believed the possibility of war between great powers had been eliminated. This sentiment was famously expressed in "The Great Illusion" by Norman Angell.

Although this book was written before the current economic crisis, the last chapter is very prescient. "From Empire to Chimerica" tells of the symbiotic relationship between China and America. The combined country "accounts for just over a 10th of the world's land surface, a quarter of its population, and a third of its economic output, and more than half of the global economic growth of the last eight years". This relationship, in which China saves and America spends, and in which China's savings is used to enable America to spend even more, is clearly unsustainable. Ferguson sees this savings glut as the cause of the current subprime crisis. That, in my humble opinion, was one of the causes; there were many bad actors involved in this catastrophe, citizen-borrowers included.

Although it is not obvious to everyone in the midst of a crisis, Ferguson correctly points out that financial engineering is one of the great forces behind human progress. The history of finance is a process of creative destruction. Financial risk-taking is necessary for economic expansion and human development, and Ferguson does a good job in making the case. Too bad it reads like a script made for the History Channel.

46 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good overall narrative, sketchy on the details, August 28, 2009

By	Sirin (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World [Ascent of Money] (Hardcover)

Angry about the bankers going bust? Ferguson starts from this premise to educate the reader into the history behind how international finance got to its current position. Beginning with loan tablets in ancient Mesopotamia, Ferguson traces the origins of government lending, the stock market, the bond market, the mysteries of quants, and a fascinating final chapter on how China and America have up to now been in a symbiotic relationsip with Chinese goods funding American avarice, but this may not be for much longer.

Ferguson's books have been getting bigger and more ambitious the more famous as he has become. With this comes a necessary amount of reductive argument, lurching from Glasgow loan sharks, to Potosi silver mines, to the reckless Scotsman John Law who set up a French state bank in the 18th Century which ended up ruining its investors. This is probably because, like all Ferguson's recent books, it is a TV tie in.

Ferguson is also very much in favour of globalisation and international finance. He plugs the book in the introduction as a teaching tool for those who are sceptical or shaky of the systems that drive money around the world. Wise up, or be a loser is his essential message. This book was finished just before the great bank collapse, and as a result doesn't have much to say on the current crisis.

This kind of chest thumping history is clearly very lucrative for Ferguson, but after his brilliant early books on the Rothschilds and the First World War, one can't help thinking with his mid career media don posing, he has acted a bit like the hedge fund managers such as Ken Griffin he idolises in this book who gained great wealth at the expense of something more solid, decent and lasting.

97 of 113 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars TV tie-in, not a history book, December 20, 2008

By	G. Murray (Tokyo) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World (Hardcover)

When I was given this book, my heart leapt because I know Niall Ferguson is a robustly contrarian, sharp, articulate and well-informed historian, but it sank immediately that I saw that the book, like many of his recent works, was again based on a television series. Ferguson is a man of genuine talent; it is a shame he chosen to prostitute that talent. No doubt "The Ascent of Money" made for a TV show of far more than average quality, but the book is necessarily scrappy and somewhat shallow. It seems to evolve according to the picturesqueness of certain locations (the televisual imperative), rather than the logic of the argument. I would like to see the television link flagged much more prominently on the cover so one is made aware in advance that this is not a serious work of history, but a potboiler designed to raise funds so that Ferguson can boost his earning power to the levels of equally (or less) brainy college contemporaries who went into finance or the law. Frankly, I was disappointed. I hope Ferguson will get back to being a proper historian soon.