The Ascent Of Money

Download or read book The Ascent of Money written by Niall Ferguson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-11-13 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 10th anniversary edition, with new chapters on the crash, Chimerica, and cryptocurrency "[An] excellent, just in time guide to the history of finance and financial crisis." —The Washington Post "Fascinating." —Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek In this updated edition, Niall Ferguson brings his classic financial history of the world up to the present day, tackling the populist backlash that followed the 2008 crisis, the descent of "Chimerica" into a trade war, and the advent of cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, with his signature clarity and expert lens. The Ascent of Money reveals finance as the backbone of history, casting a new light on familiar events: the Renaissance enabled by Italian foreign exchange dealers, the French Revolution traced back to a stock market bubble, the 2008 crisis traced from America's bankruptcy capital, Memphis, to China's boomtown, Chongqing. We may resent the plutocrats of Wall Street but, as Ferguson argues, the evolution of finance has rivaled the importance of any technological innovation in the rise of civilization. Indeed, to study the ascent and descent of money is to study the rise and fall of Western power itself.

Download or read book The Ascent of Money written by Niall Ferguson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ferguson tells the human story behind the evolution of money, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest Wall Street upheavals. The author shows that finance is, in fact, the foundation of human progress.

Download or read book History of Money written by Glyn Davies and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2010-09-15 with total page 1069 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the central importance of money in the ordinary business of the life of different people throughout the ages from ancient times to the present day. It includes the Barings crisis and the report by the Bank of England on Barings Bank; information on the state of Japanese banking; and, the changes in the financial scene in the US.

Download or read book The Ascent of Humanity written by Charles Eisenstein and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2013-02-05 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible explores the history and potential future of civilization, tracing the converging crises of our age to the illusion of the separate self Our disconnection from one another and the natural world has mislaid the foundations of science, religion, money, technology, economics, medicine, and education as we know them. It has fired our near-pathological pursuit of technological Utopias even as we push ourselves and our planet to the brink of collapse. Fortunately, an Age of Reunion is emerging out of the birth pangs of an earth in crisis. Our journey of separation hasn't been a terrible mistake but an evolutionary process and an adventure in self-discovery. Even in our darkest hour, Eisenstein sees the possibility of a more beautiful world—not through the extension of millennia-old methods of management and control but by fundamentally reimagining ourselves and our systems. We must shift away from our Babelian efforts to build ever-higher towers to heaven and instead turn out attention to creating a new kind of civilization—one designed for beauty rather than height.

Download or read book The Ascent of Information written by Caleb Scharf and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-06-14 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Full of fascinating insights drawn from an impressive range of disciplines, The Ascent of Information casts the familiar and the foreign in a dramatic new light.” —Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe Your information has a life of its own, and it’s using you to get what it wants. One of the most peculiar and possibly unique features of humans is the vast amount of information we carry outside our biological selves. But in our rush to build the infrastructure for the 20 quintillion bits we create every day, we’ve failed to ask exactly why we’re expending ever-increasing amounts of energy, resources, and human effort to maintain all this data. Drawing on deep ideas and frontier thinking in evolutionary biology, computer science, information theory, and astrobiology, Caleb Scharf argues that information is, in a very real sense, alive. All the data we create—all of our emails, tweets, selfies, A.I.-generated text and funny cat videos—amounts to an aggregate lifeform. It has goals and needs. It can control our behavior and influence our well-being. And it’s an organism that has evolved right alongside us. This symbiotic relationship with information offers a startling new lens for looking at the world. Data isn’t just something we produce; it’s the reason we exist. This powerful idea has the potential to upend the way we think about our technology, our role as humans, and the fundamental nature of life. The Ascent of Information offers a humbling vision of a universe built of and for information. Scharf explores how our relationship with data will affect our ongoing evolution as a species. Understanding this relationship will be crucial to preventing our data from becoming more of a burden than an asset, and to preserving the possibility of a human future.

Download or read book Money written by John Kenneth Galbraith and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-29 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Money is nothing more than what is commonly exchanged for goods or services, so why has understanding it become so complicated? In Money, renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith cuts through the confusions surrounding the subject to present a compelling and accessible account of a topic that affects us all. He tells the fascinating story of money, the key factors that shaped its development, and the lessons that can be learned from its history. He describes the creation and evolution of monetary systems and explains how finance, credit, and banks work in the global economy. Galbraith also shows that, when it comes to money, nothing is truly new—least of all inflation and fraud.

Download or read book The Great Degeneration written by Niall Ferguson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-06-24 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of The Ascent of Money and The Square and the Tower, a searching and provocative examination of the widespread institutional rot that threatens our collective future What causes rich countries to lose their way? Symptoms of decline are all around us today: slowing growth, crushing debts, increasing inequality, aging populations, antisocial behavior. But what exactly has gone wrong? The answer, Niall Ferguson argues in The Great Degeneration, is that our institutions—the intricate frameworks within which a society can flourish or fail—are degenerating. With characteristic verve and historical insight, Ferguson analyzes the causes of this stagnation and its profound consequences for the future of the West. The Great Degeneration is an incisive indictment of an era of negligence and complacency—and to arrest the breakdown of our civilization, Ferguson warns, will take heroic leadership and radical reform.