NEW BOOK: MONEY: A STORY OF HUMANITY

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V27 2024 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 27, Number 39, September 29, 2024, Article 6

I'm a "big picture" guy, and enjoy books that take the big, long view of how money came to be, as a way of better understanding the money artifacts we collect - coins, tokens and paper money. Here's a new one by economist David McWilliams, touching on topics of trade, science, art and philosophy and ranging from tally sticks to today's cryptocurrency. Here's the Amazon description and an excerpt from a review by The Guardian. -Editor

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd
ISBN: 9781471195433
Number of pages: 416
Dimensions: 234 x 153 x 30 mm

In this groundbreaking book, renowned global economist David McWilliams unlocks the mysteries and the awesome power of money: what it is, how it works, and why it matters.

The story of money is the story of our desires, our genius, and our downfalls. Money is power—and power beguiles. Nothing we've invented as a species has defined our own evolution so thoroughly and changed the direction of our planet's history so dramatically. Money has shaped the very essence of what it means to be human. We can't hope to understand ourselves without it. And yet despite money's primacy, most of us don't truly understand it. As economist David McWilliams states, money is everything. "Money defines the relationship between worker and employer, buyer and seller, merchant and producer. But not only that: it also defines the bond between the governed and the governor, the state and the citizen. Money unlocks pleasure, puts a price on desire, art and creativity. It motivates us to strive, achieve, invent and take risks. Money also brings out humanity's darker side, invoking greed, envy, hatred, violence and, of course, colonialism." Money isn't just paper or coins or virtual currency. Money is humanity.

Leading economics expert, David McWilliams answers these questions and more in Money, an epic, breathlessly entertaining journey across the world through the present and the past, from the birthplace of money in ancient Babylon to the beginning of trade along the silk road to China, from Marrakech markets to Wall Street and the dawn of cryptocurrency. By tracking its history, McWilliams uncovers our relationship with money, transforming our perspective on its impact on the world right now. McWilliams is no dusty economist; he is a communicator at the highest level, a highly telegenic and marketable expert who is as comfortable in front of a large audience talking about his favourite subject as he is appearing on podcasts, social media, and even in stand-up comedy. He's been called Ireland's most important economist and is ranked among the leading economists working today.

The story of money is the story of earth's most inventive, destructive, and dangerous animal: Homo sapiens. It is our story.

Here's an excerpt from the Guardian review by Larry Elliott. -Editor

The author makes a bold claim: that the story of money is the story of humanity itself. Writing, he says, "came about because of another groundbreaking technology: money. Money was the first thing we wrote about."

The argument doesn't altogether convince, but McWilliams, a former economist at the Central Bank of Ireland, does know how to write. His book is well researched and crammed full of anecdotes that help bring a dry subject to life. Some are familiar enough. No book about money would be complete without a mention of Dutch tulip mania in the 1630s or the South Sea Bubble of 1720. Other stories will be more surprising, for example the fact that Darwin's theory of evolution was inspired not by a biological treatise, but an economic one – Thomas Malthus's work on population. It was also news to me that The Wizard of Oz could be seen as an allegory for the struggle between the populists of the American heartlands and the east-coast financial elites in the 1890s. Hitler's planned attempt to destroy the British economy through airdrops of counterfeit banknotes crafted by inmates of concentration camps is well told.

The section on how commercial banks create money will be tough going for the lay reader, and is out of character compared with the light touch in the rest of the book. The early chapters – which take in a credit crunch in Imperial Rome and the challenge posed to the Catholic church by the merchants of Florence around the time of the Black Death – feel fresher than the boilerplate accounts of the global financial crisis of 2008 and the advent of bitcoin.