Nobel Prize-winning Economics, David McWilliams, who not only trained as an economist but also worked as a central banker, on the financial markets, and founder of Kilkenomics – the world’s first festival of economics and stand-up comedy, take the fun out money, then he is the exception that proves the rule: a man who could not write a boring sentence if he tired Tom Holland.

Money is everything,  but  not one man in a million understands the nature of money. It brings freedom and it takes away. It inspires and corrupts us. But what is money? Is it main thing holding us back from utopia or is it the one constant that’s driven us to success? 

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.

Money sits at the very core of human social and economic life. Money is so fundamental  part of our conceptual furniture that is hard to get an objective view: misleading metaphors, conventional misunderstandings, and the surreptitious special pleading of vested interests abound.

Money, he explains, is nothing more or less than a “wondrous technology” that “resides inner heads, representing value”, and which “humans invented to help us negotiate an increasingly complex and interrelated world”. The myth that Money is a medium of exchange that emerges from barter, instead he identifies money clearly as a specific, but constantly evolving, collection of ideas and institutions- from numeracy and accounting through to coinage and the eurodollar market.

In his illuminating entertaining and often surprising book, economist David McWilliams charts the relationship between humans and money -from clay tablets in Mesopotamia to cons 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, 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 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.

Money: A Story of Humanity by David McWilliams, Simon & Schuster £25, 416 pages.

Nobel Prize-winning Economics, David McWilliams, who not only trained as an economist but also worked as a central banker, on the financial markets, and founder of Kilkenomics – the world’s first festival of economics and stand-up comedy, take the fun out money, then he is the exception that proves the rule: a man who could not write a boring sentence if he tired Tom Holland.

Money is everything,  but  not one man in a million understands the nature of money. It brings freedom and it takes away. It inspires and corrupts us. But what is money? Is it main thing holding us back from utopia or is it the one constant that’s driven us to success? 

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.

Money sits at the very core of human social and economic life. Money is so fundamental  part of our conceptual furniture that is hard to get an objective view: misleading metaphors, conventional misunderstandings, and the surreptitious special pleading of vested interests abound.

Money, he explains, is nothing more or less than a “wondrous technology” that “resides inner heads, representing value”, and which “humans invented to help us negotiate an increasingly complex and interrelated world”. The myth that Money is a medium of exchange that emerges from barter, instead he identifies money clearly as a specific, but constantly evolving, collection of ideas and institutions- from numeracy and accounting through to coinage and the eurodollar market.

In his illuminating entertaining and often surprising book, economist David McWilliams charts the relationship between humans and money -from clay tablets in Mesopotamia to cons 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, 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 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.

Money: A Story of Humanity by David McWilliams, Simon & Schuster £25, 416 pages.