The best new books to read about finance
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Money: A Story of Humanity. By David McWilliams.
Simon & Schuster; 416 pages; £25 How Economics Explains the World. By Andrew Leigh. Mariner Books; 240 pages; $26. Published in Britain as “The Shortest History of Economics"; Old Street; £14.99 There is no shortage of books on the history of money, for the straightforward reason that publishing them reliably convinces readers to part with theirs.
And no wonder. Money is a central part of everyday life, as well as being a route to power or ruin. It is strange, seductive and maddeningly difficult to understand, all of which makes it irresistible.
Yet that allure rarely makes it to the page. Money is fascinating. But reading about money can be mind-numbingly dull.
That is certainly not a description that can be applied to “Money", a new book by David McWilliams. Do not be put off by the fact that the author is a former central banker—this is no dry tome on monetary theory. Instead, it is a whistle-stop tour through human history, with money and its engineers as the central characters.
It opens with Adolf Hitler’s plot to destabilise Britain by forging £133m (£5.2bn, or $6.9bn, in today’s money) and ordering the German air force to scatter it over the country, hoping to set off hyperinflation. Hitler’s reasoning is also Mr McWilliams’s central theme: money and society are inextricably bound together. A dizzying array of historical anecdotes follows.
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