Behandelt de geschiedenis van geld als zijnde een ruilmiddel en de ontwikkeling in de tijd. Ik weet niet of ik het zijn conclusie mag noemen, maar het laatste hoofdstuk vergelijkt deze ontwikkeling met de "gewone" natuur: evolutie van soorten, afsterven of uitsterven etc. verrassende denkrichting...
Politicians in my country often say that we are "a bridge between the East and the West" or that we can "balance and be friends with everybody". As a consequence we are poor, uneducated and confused, without proper private property protection, rule of law or market competition. Ferguson's book ex...
In his latest book Niall Ferguson argues that the four key institutions (Democracy, Capitalism, Rule of Law, and Civil Society) that allowed the West to dominate the last half millennium are now all in decay. The erosion of these institutions’ previous 'cumulative added value' has led to a stagn...
"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's...that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied...With infinite complacency men went to a...
Historical counterfactuals are fun to ponder: What if John Wilkes Booth had had poor aim? What if Hitler hadn't declared war on the United States after Pearl Harbor? What if Napoleon had escaped to South America in a tiny submarine after Waterloo? Niall Ferguson wants to go even further. Alterna...
Though this book was written in 2003, it comes across as some what dated. It spends a great deal looking at the balance of power in the then present as it seeks to justify the benevolence of the American Empire, alluding that perhaps if not for it, then calamity would befall the World. I do for t...
This book is bizarre. It’s a sort of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde book. On the one hand, it’s extremely well-written, and tells a very complex historical narrative in a lucid and compelling manner, something that is quite difficult to do. It is also very honest and up-front about the greed, oppression,...
The House of Rothschild is a hefty tome covering 200 years and several generations of this family. It is published in two volumes, each about 650 pages long in small (?6 point?) type. In hard cover, each one qualifies as a kitten crusher; together they could harm a small pony.Since they were pu...