Category: History of Money

A Little History of Economics
Niall Kishtainy

A highly readable and engaging book that explains the history of economics for beginners.

Kishtainy covers major events in history in relation to economics and introduces the reader to the major influential economic thinkers throughout history, such as Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It explains some big concepts about money in an easy to understand and fascinating way. If you want to nerd out about economics and think about money from different perspectives check it out.

The Ascent of Money
A financial history of the world
Niall Ferguson

Despite thoroughly enjoying this book, I would only recommend it to someone who is a financial nerd like myself, or a history buff.

Ferguson, a Senior Fellow at Stanford University and Harvard, certainly knows his financial history. He covers a lot of ground in this book. The history of stocks, bonds and credit on a global scale across hundreds of years and the development in the west of our obsession with property. I found myself getting lost on occasion as a lot of the historical events and people he describes were new to me. I’m just highlighting my lack of historical knowledge here.

This book was made into a television series. I haven’t seen it but would certainly be interested in seeing how the book is translated visually into a show. Furthermore, as I mentioned the book covers so much information it’s the kind of book you either need to have some prior knowledge of financial history or be prepared that there is so much to take in that you’re not going to remember half of it or will need to read the book again, as I certainly need to do.