Customer Reviews

Comments by Michael Calum Jacques author of '1st Century Radical'. - By: Michael Calum Jacques, 21 Nov 2008
The title of this book makes quite a claim. Niall Ferguson is a Harvard University professor from the UK, who produced a volume on the story of the Rothschild financial dynastyin the late 1990s, The book certainly has a number of interesting features e.g. its summary of recent events both precipitating & within the housing market 'crisis' & international commercial relationships between superpowers. Nevertheless, the impression is that the work - fascinating though it isin parts - may just have been a little bit 'scraped together', somewhat hurried.

Given the lightening blitz which has rocked all corners, streets & avenues of the globe's financial institutions, this is perhaps understandable & even forgivable, almost. Recent news bulletins have featured housing crises, bank runs & a possible recession looming forbiddingly. Given that he presumably had only human resources at his disposal, the author may well have reached for a crystal ball as a source of greater predictability than the global market indicators have been able to offer any of us, himself included, of late.

Returning to our initial point, viz. the sheer scope this work claims to encompass, this reviewer particularly appreciated Ferguson's sweep through the civilisations of the pastin this Financial History of the World; thus the Inca's spurning of gold & silver as money, the pre-Christian Mesopotamian/Babylonian credit notesin the form of clay tablets & many more indicators of the development of, & various civilisations' attitudes towards, money & financein general. Yet Ferguson omits to make, as far as this reviewer can see, any reference to the light which spectral analysis technology (through its illumination of discarded domestic papyri texts) has thrown on the surprising wealth of certain women within the ancient world.

Ferguson's philosophy, which he keeps hidden up his sleeve for most of the book, proposes that finance evolves through natural selection. He uses this hypothesis to account for the appearance & denigration of new financial models which respond to new demands made by various societies. That analysis may risk a degree of oversimplification, but that will be variously assessed by the background, training, & disposition of the reader. All that being said, this is a challenging & a stimulating read.

Michael Calum Jacques