A Brief History of Money: 4000 Years of Markets, Currencies, Debt and Crisis

by David Orrell

What do cacao beans, cowrie shells, paper cards, cigarettes and digital databases all have in common? At some time, they have been used as a form of money. Money is an essential aspect of everyday life and something that we usually take for granted until it all goes wrong. This book traces the role, growth and impact of money and finance on individuals, human civilisation and the type of economy we live in. The financial history of the world reads like a fascinating novel with innumerable twists and turns. We strive for financial stability and security, yet this often proves surprisingly ephemeral. Just as we hope we have reached a new plateau of prosperity, the financial system has a habit of throwing a wrench in the works, forcing us to change and adapt to new circumstances. This book traces the financial system from its birth as a credit system in ancient Mesopotamia, to the financial revolutions of the 20th and 21st centuries. Why did the American forces desperately try to destroy money during the American Revolution? Why do we tend to succumb to boom and busts? And if inflation is bad, why is deflation even worse? Also, the book looks at the effect money has on ourselves. Does money make us irrational? Is money really the root of all evil, or should we celebrate money for its potential to create prosperity and overcome poverty?

Genres: Economics

160 pages, Hardcover

Published October 6, 2020

About the author

David Orrell, Ph.D. is a scientist and author of popular science books. He studied mathematics at the University of Alberta, and obtained his Ph.D. from Oxford University on the prediction of nonlinear systems.

His work in mathematical modeling and complex systems research has led him to diverse areas such as weather forecasting, particle accelerator design, economics, and cancer biology. He has authored or coauthored research papers for journals including Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Nature Genetics, the International Journal of Bifurcations and Chaos, and Physica D.

He is the author of Economyths and The Other Side of the Coin: The Emerging Vision of Economics and Our Place in The World about new economic theories; and The Future of Everything: The Science of Prediction about prediction in weather, genetics, and economics, which was a national bestseller and finalist for the 2007 Canadian Science Writers' Association book award. Foresight called it "An engaging, as well as deeply insightful, discussion on the difficult task of prediction ... it can change the way you view forecasting."

David has been a guest on radio shows including Coast to Coast AM, NPR, and BBC, and his work has been featured in print media such as New Scientist and the Financial Times. He has spoken at many conferences and events including the Art Center Global Dialogues on Disruptive Thinking. He currently lives in Oxford, UK, where he runs a mathematical consultancy Systems Forecasting.

Awards
Finalist: Canadian Science Writers' Association book award (2007)
Finalist: National Business Book Award (2011)

Reviews

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

We live in an era when money is both exceedingly important to our lives, but at the same time more abstract, obscure, and effervescent than ever.

A Brief History of Money explores the ways in which people and societies confer power, utility and value through the expedient of currency in its many forms. Orrell traces the history back to its most rudimentary form through bartering up to its most amorphous with the likes of cryptocurrencies — from a time when value was determined between one another, to a state authority, to eventually with crypto, one not clearly defined by either.

For the most part, Orrell does a superb job breaking down the vagaries of money and its most influential thinkers, and where he falters, as with his chapter on economics, I feel like that’s more of a function of the subject itself not being reducible to twenty pages. Although, Orrell definitely makes it clear how contentious, confusing, and deliberately obfuscating the subject can be — without, most importantly, committing these same crimes himself as he attempts to unravel them.

The entire section on boom and bust was probably my favourite. The sheer scale and fickleness of success and failure is frighteningly simple to understand in hindsight, and hindsight only it seems.

I also feel like the human element of economics briefly touched upon at the end is sadly truncated here, but again, Orrell explains this is a relatively new field largely ignored by economists until now. When your goal is to craft a scientific model of economics, the human element naturally obliterates it.

I had a lot of fun reading A Brief History of Money.

[Svetlana Kva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Insightful and very well written by a highly educated and clever author however finding it hard to bring some of his theses together and its left too open ended.

[Lisa Montgomery · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was doing research on forging bank notes in England, and this book proved quite helpful. A man named William Booth was one of those I sought to learn more about.
160 pages