Published: 2 Apr 2025
Last updated: 5 Apr 2025
Money: A Story of Humanity
- Release Date: 2024
- Genre: Non-fiction, History, Business
- Themes/Moods: Medium-paced
- Rating: 3/5
An interesting, if sometimes disjointed book (a natural byproduct of trying to cover the whole history of humanity in under 400 pages), with the general thesis being that, through numerous examples in history, money and financial innovations lead to both technological innovations and social progress (…generally, African colonialism and other ugly parts of history do rear their head occasionally) -> and conversely a lack money and/or undermining the trust underpinning the monetary system leads to grave consequences (the fall of the Roman Empire and the subsequent “Dark Ages”, Weimar hyperinflation amongst others).
Its clearly written and aimed to be conversational, breezy and light (compared to the typical behemoths economic books tend to be), turning what could be a pretty dull subject into something easily digestible - however given the ‘slices of history’ approach one can feel a lack of detail per ‘slice of history’ (the first half of the book covering Ancient/Medieval money is significantly more in-depth relative to the second) and remain unconvinced due to relying on numerous examples rather than some ‘grand unifying’ theory, despite (largely) sound ideas and observations throughout. I did feel a lack of an anthropologist (or more historically-oriented) view to perhaps uncover alternative ancient non-money economies (?) as, like most historic retellings, the story presented felt a little too obvious - but I suspect this to be a reaction having also read Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years - at least the myth of the barter economy remains firmly unwritten here.
