Bread, cash, money, liquid, bucks, dough, black, available, means of living: however you say it, money counts. For Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. For generals, it is the means of waging war- for revolutionaries, it is the chains of labor. But what exactly is money, where did it come from, and how did we end up living in a world where most money is invisible? The first step to understanding the complexity of modern financial institutions is to trace their origins - something this unique introduction to economics and economic history offers.

Recognizing in the spread of money a driving force of recent history, renowned economist Niall Ferguson unfolds a series of fascinating scenarios in which the Medici, the Rothschilds, the Bank of England, the Paris Stock Exchange, insurance companies, and Wall Street have contributed in their own way to the historical significance of liquid money soaring into the stratosphere - where it is not just a tangible piece of paper but a universal abstraction called credit. Although written before the current economic crisis, the book proves to be extremely insightful, identifying in the symbiotic relationship between China and America ("Chimerica"), where the former saves and the latter spends, one of the causes of the modern crisis.

The most important lesson of financial history is that sooner or later every bubble bursts, the "bears" - the pessimistic sellers - outnumber the "bulls" - the optimistic buyers - and greed turns into fear. So whether one struggles to make ends meet or strives to become the master of the universe, the need to understand the course of money and its functioning in the modern world has never been as urgent as it is today.