The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World

Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot. Call if what you like, it matters now more than ever. In The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that financial history is the back-story to all history.

Fromthe banking dynasty who funded the Italian Renaissance to the stockmarket bubble that caused the French Revolution, this is the story ofbooms and busts as it's never been told before.

With the world inthe grip of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression,there's never been a better time to understand the ascent - and descent -of money.

'Beautifully written ... Breathtakingly clever'Sunday Telegraph

'A lucid and racy account of financial history'New Statesman

'A fine, readable and entertaining history' Dominic Sandbrook, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year

'The tales he tells of boom and bust, of triumph and disaster, ofbubbles that inflate ... are the very essence of financial history'Bill Emmott, Financial Times

'An often enlightening andenjoyable tour through the underside of great events, a lesson in howthe most successful great powers have always been underpinned by smartmoney'Robert Skidelsky, New York Review of Books