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Money is everything. It brings freedom and it takes it away. It inspires and corrupts us. But what is money? Is it the main thing holding us back from utopia or is it the one constant that’s driven us to success?
In his illuminating, entertaining and often surprising book, economist David McWilliams charts the relationship between humans and money – from clay tablets in Mesopotamia to coins in Ancient Greece, from mathematics in the medieval Arab world to the French Revolution, and from the emergence of the US dollar right up to today’s cryptocurrency. Along the way, we meet a host of characters who have innovated with money, disrupting society and transforming the way we live. Like humanity, money is ever changing, adapting to its time and circumstances. The question is, over the last 5,000 years, have we changed money or has money changed us?
Money tells an astonishing new story of our species. Taking the reader on an epic journey through the history of money, McWilliams reveals its fundamental role in our world.
David McWilliams is a global economist, bestselling writer, journalist and broadcaster whose unique ability to communicate complex societal and economic structures is unparalleled. Having worked at the Central Bank of Ireland, he became a faculty member at Trinity College, Dublin business school. He hosts a popular weekly economics podcast and is co-founder of the world’s only festival combining economics and stand-up comedy, Kilkenomics, as well as the Dalkey book festival. He’s been described as being to economics what David Attenborough is to the natural sciences and Brian Cox is to physics.