Money changes everything: how finance made civilization possible

Table of Contents:

I FROM CUNEIFORM TO CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION
1. Finance and Writing
2. Finance and Urbanism
3. Financial Architecture
4. Mesopotamian Twilight
5. Athenian Finance
6. Monetary Revolution
7. Roman Finance

II THE FINANCIAL LEGACY OF CHINA
8. China's First Financial World
9. Unity and Bureaucracy
10. Financial Divergence

III THE EUROPEAN CRUCIBLE
11. The Temple and Finance
12. Venice
13. Fibonacci and Finance
14. Immortal Bonds
15. The Discovery of Chance
16. Efficient Markets
17. Europe, Inc.
18. Corporations and Exploration
19. A Projecting Age
20. A Bubble in France
21. According to Hoyle
22. Securitization and Debt

IV THE EMERGENCE OF GLOBAL MARKETS
23. Marx and Markets
24. China's Financiers
25. The Russian Bear
26. Keynes to the Rescue
27. The New Financial World
28. Re-Engineering the Future
29. Post-War Theory

In the aftermath of recent financial crises, it's easy to see finance as a wrecking ball: something that destroys fortunes and jobs, and undermines governments and banks. In Money Changes Everything, leading financial historian William Goetzmann argues the exact opposite—that the development of finance has made the growth of civilizations possible. Goetzmann explains that finance is a time machine, a technology that allows us to move value forward and backward through time; and that this innovation has changed the very way we think about and plan for the future. He shows how finance was present at key moments in history: driving the invention of writing in ancient Mesopotamia, spurring the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome to become great empires, determining the rise and fall of dynasties in imperial China, and underwriting the trade expeditions that led Europeans to the New World. He also demonstrates how the apparatus we associate with a modern economy—stock markets, lines of credit, complex financial products, and international trade—were repeatedly developed, forgotten, and reinvented over the course of human history.

Exploring the critical role of finance over the millennia, and around the world, Goetzmann details how wondrous financial technologies and institutions—money, bonds, banks, corporations, and more—have helped urban centers to expand and cultures to flourish. And it's not done reshaping our lives, as Goetzmann considers the challenges we face in the future, such as how to use the power of finance to care for an aging and expanding population.

Money Changes Everything presents a fascinating look into the way that finance has steered the course of history.

(http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10662.html)