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The Ascent of Money A Financial History of the World With Earbuds Playaway Adult Nonfiction specifications:
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The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World With Earbuds (Playaway Adult Nonfiction) (Preloaded Digital Audio Player) Reviews:
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187 of 217 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of five stars
The Financial Subplot,
November 15, 2008
By ,Izaak VanGaalen San Francisco, CA USA See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World Hardcover
Niall Ferguson has written an easily available and entertaining history of finance, ranging from the clay tokens of Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago to the hedge money of today. The title of this book has seemingly been modelled on Jacob Bronowski’s “The Ascent of Man,” and like that book it’ll be made into a TV series. Being a TV celebrity isn’t something that wins the admiration of one’s peers in the history profession, to say the least. But those little rebukes are comparatively light in comparison to the scorn he received for his political views in Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for world Power and Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire. In those works he argued that empire was useful not only to the mother country but the dominated countries also. 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 many of the big historical powers like the role of money in ancient Mesopotamia, the denarius in Roman society, and gold and silver in the civilization of the Incas. He’s 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 successive shift to London.
History is filled with financial disasters of which we’re 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 some number of generations to overcome. Making matters worse, it occurred simultaneously as the British South Sea Bubble.
Also instructive is the history of the 1st great globalization 1870 1914. For this period also read Jeffrey Frieden’s world Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century. The world had become so inexpensively 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 prescient. “From Empire to Chimerica” tells of the symbiotic relationship between China and America. The joint country “accounts for just over a tenth of the world’s land surface, a quarter of its population, and a 3rd of its economic output, and more than half of the world economic growth of the last eight years”. This relationship, in which China saves and America spends, and in which China’s savings can be used to enable America to use up more, is obviously 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 isn’t evident to everyone in the midst of a crisis, Ferguson properly points out that financial engineering is one of the great forces behind human progress. The history of finance is a procedure of creative destruction. Financial risk taking is needed for economic expansion and human development, and Ferguson does a great job in making the case. Too bad it reads like a script made for the History Channel.
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32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of five stars
Good in general 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
mad 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 origin of government lending, the stock market, the bond market, the mysteries of quants, and a fascinating last chapter on how China and America have up to now been in a symbiotic relationsip with Chinese products financial support American avarice, but this may not be for much longer.
Ferguson’s books have been to get bigger and more ambitious the more famous as he became. With this comes a needed total 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 most likely because, like all Ferguson’s recent books, it’s a TV tie in.
Ferguson is 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 globe. Wise up, or be a loser is his essential message. This book has been finished just before the great bank collapse, and consequently does not have much to say on the current crisis.
This kind of chest thumping history is obviously lucrative for Ferguson, but after his smart early books on the Rothschilds and the 1st World War, one can not help thinking with his mid career media don posing, he’s acted a bit like the hedge fund managers like Ken Griffin he idolises in this book who gained great money at the expense of something more hard, decent and lasting.
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65 of 74 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of five stars
TV tie in, not a history book,
December 20, 2008
By ,G. Murray Tokyo See all my reviews
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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 informed historian, but it sank now that I saw that the book, like many of his recent works, was again depending on a TV series. Ferguson is a man of real talent, it’s a shame he chosen to prostitute that skill. No doubt “The Ascent of Money” made for a TV show of far more than average quality, but the book is essentially scrappy and somewhat shallow. It looks to evolve as indicated by the picturesqueness of some places the televisual imperative, rather than the logic of the argument. I could like to see the TV link flagged more prominently on the cover so one is made aware in advance that this isn’t a serious work of history, but a potboiler intended to increase money so that Ferguson can increase his earning power to the levels of equally or less brainy college contemporaries who went into finance or the law. Truthfully, I has been disappointed. I hope Ferguson will get back to being a correct historian soon.
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May 1, 2009 at 8:16 pm
None of the stores in Boston had it in stock so i had to buy it from ebay
May 2, 2009 at 10:29 pm
What’s the ascent compared to other finance books?
May 3, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Costco had the best price before, buy it there
May 4, 2009 at 8:11 pm
It’s one of the better finance books out there. Good Pricing.
May 5, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Is that the lowest price for the ascent of online, or all deals included?
May 6, 2009 at 5:29 pm
Is online price generally better than store price?
May 7, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Check any price comparison web sites for lowest price.
May 8, 2009 at 10:23 pm
it’s in limited availability, and hard to find a rebate, so dont bother too much, just buy it
May 9, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Looked for coupon sites
May 10, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Amazon or Ebay generaly have a low price than an outlet
May 11, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Who is the cheapest online dealer?
May 12, 2009 at 7:33 pm
price of the ascent is a great deal for finance books
May 13, 2009 at 2:41 pm
wouldnt want to get this one refurbished haha
May 14, 2009 at 6:25 pm
It’s hard to find it on a discount or closeout sales
May 15, 2009 at 0:34 pm
Closeout prices aren’t a better deal so no point in waiting, buy it now.
May 16, 2009 at 0:42 pm
i buy it at Amazon store that had a lowest price, but usually online deals are better