The History of Money

"Learned, lively and often irreverent, David McWilliams's The History of Money is rich with surprising details about currency, then and now." -The New York Times In this fresh, eye-opening global history, economist David McWilliams charts the relationship between humans and money-from clay tablets in Mesopotamia to cryptocurrency in Silicon Valley. The story of humanity is inextricable from that of money. No innovation has defined our own evolution so thoroughly and changed the direction of our planet's history so dramatically. And yet despite money's primacy, most of us don't truly understand it. As leading economist David McWilliams shows, money is central to every aspect of our civilization, from the political to the artistic. "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