Money : A Story of Humanity

Author: McWilliams, David

General & world history

Published on 12 September 2024 by Simon & Schuster Ltd in the United Kingdom.

Hardback | 416 pages
235 x 155 x 34 | 498g

*AS HEARD ON RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK* THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARDS 2024 NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR A WATERSTONES NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024 ‘A breathtaking, expansive and imaginative ride through the history and future of money from an author who truly understands it’ PROFESSOR BRIAN COX ‘Exceptional’ FINANCIAL TIMES  ?‘A cracking book that is as enjoyable as it is readable’ PETER FRANKOPAN ‘Equally entertaining and insightful’ YANIS VAROUFAKIS MONEY.

The object of our desires.

The engine of our genius.

Humanity’s greatest invention.

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 5000 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 society.

‘An impressive journey that fizzes with facts’ ECONOMIST ‘An eye-opening history of what makes the world go round’ EVENING STANDARD ‘David McWilliams is the best explainer of economics I know’ SIMON KUPER ‘Compelling, funny and original’ KATJA HOYER ‘If, as David McWilliams complains, economists take the fun out of money, then he is the exception that proves the rule: a man who could not write a boring sentence if he tried’ TOM HOLLAND