A Financial History of the World

The Ascent of Money

Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot. Call if what you like, it matters now more than ever. In The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that financial history is the back-story to all history. 
 
From the banking dynasty who funded the Italian Renaissance to the stock market bubble that caused the French Revolution, this is the story of booms and busts as it's never been told before. 
 
With the world in the grip of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, there's never been a better time to understand the ascent - and descent - of money. 
 
'Beautifully written ... Breathtakingly clever' Sunday Telegraph 
 
'A lucid and racy account of financial history' New Statesman 
 
'A fine, readable and entertaining history' Dominic Sandbrook, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year 
 
 'The tales he tells of boom and bust, of triumph and disaster, of bubbles that inflate ... are the very essence of financial history' Bill Emmott, Financial Times 
 
'An often enlightening and enjoyable tour through the underside of great events, a lesson in how the most successful great powers have always been underpinned by smart money' Robert Skidelsky, New York Review of Books

Niall Ferguson is one of Britain's most renowned historians. He is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, and a visiting professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing. He is the author of fifteen books, including The Pity of War, The House of Rothschild, Empire, Civilization and Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist, which won the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Prize. He is an award-making filmmaker, too, having won an international Emmy for his PBS series The Ascent of Money. His many other prizes include the Benjamin Franklin Prize for Public Service (2010), the Hayek Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2012) and the Ludwig Erhard Prize for Economic Journalism (2013). He was named Columnist of the Year at the 2018 British Press Awards.

Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot. Call it what you like, it matters now more than ever. In The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is the foundation of all human progress and the lifeblood of history. From the cash injection that funded the Italian Renaissance to the stock market bubble that sparked the French Revolution, from the bonds that fuelled Britain's war effort to the Wall Street Crash and today's meltdown, this is the story of boom and bust as it's never been told before. Whether you're scraping by or rolling in it, there's no better time to understand the ascent of money.

The West and the Rest

Civilization

Winner of the Estoril Global Issues Distinguished Book Prize 2013 
 
In 1412, Europe was a miserable backwater ravaged by plague, bad sanitation and incessant war, while the Orient was home to dazzling civilizations. Yet, somehow, the West came to dominate the Rest for most of the next half millennium. 
 
In this vital, brilliant book, Niall Ferguson reveals the six 'killer applications' that the Rest lacked: competition, science, property rights, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic. And he asks: do we still have these winning tools? Or is this the end of Western ascendancy? 
 
'Brilliantly written, full of wit and virtuosity, stuffed with memorable lines and gorgeous bits of information. A great read' The Times 
 
'A dazzling history of Western ideas ... epic' Economist 
 
'Vivid and fascinating' Daily Telegraph 
 
'Superb ... brings history alive ... dazzling' Independent 
 
'This is sharp. It feels urgent. Ferguson ... twists his knife with great literary brio' Andrew Marr, Financial Times

Ferguson is the most brilliant British historian of his generation ... he writes with splendid panache

Civilization is another masterpiece ... a pulsing energy suffuses his account [and] fascinating facts burst like fireworks on every page

This is sharp. It feels urgent. Ferguson, with a properly financially literate mind, twists his knife with great literary brio

Networks, Hierarchies and the Struggle for Global Power

The Square and the Tower

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 
'Silicon Valley needed a history lesson and Ferguson has provided it' Eric Schmidt 
 
Most history is about the people at the top of the towers of power. But what if the real action is in the social networks down below, in the town squares? Niall Ferguson, the international bestselling author of Empire, The Ascent of Money and Civilization, brilliantly recasts past and present as an unending contest between hierarchies and networks. 
 
'Provocative, snappy, a rare book ... fasten your seatbelts' Peter Frankopan, Daily Telegraph 
 
'Immensely stimulating, absorbing, illuminating ... sends ideas blazing all over the place ... one of the best popular historians of our time' David Goodhart, Prospect 
 
'Powerful, fast-paced ... a pull-yourself-together warning to the present by way of arresting historical precedent' Andrew Anthony, Guardian 
 
'Captivating and compelling' Jonathan A. Knee, The New York Times

How Britain Made the Modern World

Empire

Niall Ferguson's acclaimed bestseller on the highs and lows of Britain's empire 
 
Once vast swathes of the globe were coloured imperial red and Britannia ruled not just the waves, but the prairies of America, the plains of Asia, the jungles of Africa and the deserts of Arabia. Just how did a small, rainy island in the North Atlantic achieve all this? And why did the empire on which the sun literally never set finally decline and fall? Niall Ferguson's acclaimed Empire brilliantly unfolds the imperial story in all its splendours and its miseries, showing how a gang of buccaneers and gold-diggers planted the seed of the biggest empire in all history - and set the world on the road to modernity. 
 
'The most brilliant British historian of his generation ... Ferguson examines the roles of "pirates, planters, missionaries, mandarins, bankers and bankrupts" in the creation of history's largest empire ... he writes with splendid panache ... and a seemingly effortless, debonair wit' Andrew Roberts 
 
'Dazzling ... wonderfully readable' New York Review of Books 
 
'A remarkably readable précis of the whole British imperial story - triumphs, deceits, decencies, kindnesses, cruelties and all' Jan Morris 
 
'Empire is a pleasure to read and brims with insights and intelligence' Sunday Times

Niall Ferguson is one of Britain's most renowned historians. He is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, and a visiting professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing. His most recent book is The Square and the Tower.

1923-1968: The Idealist

Kissinger

'Riveting ... this will be his masterpiece' - Andrew Roberts, The New York Times 
 
'For big, bold and compelling, it is impossible to ignore Kissinger' - John Bew, New Statesman, Books of the Year 
 
'This is a superb history of the modern world as well as a biography of Kissinger ... a tour de force' William Shawcross, The Times 
 
No American statesman has been as revered and as reviled as Henry Kissinger. Hailed by some as the "indispensable man", whose advice has been sought by every president from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush, Kissinger has also attracted immense hostility from critics who have cast him as an amoral Machiavellian - the ultimate cold-blooded "realist". 
 
In this remarkable new book, the first of two volumes, Niall Ferguson has created an extraordinary panorama of Kissinger's world, and a paradigm-shifting reappraisal of the man. Only through knowledge of Kissinger's early life (as a Jew in Hitler's Germany, a poor immigrant in New York, a GI at the Battle of the Bulge, an interrogator of Nazis, and a student of history at Harvard) can we understand his debt to the philosophy of idealism. 
 
And only by tracing his rise, fall and revival as an adviser to Kennedy, Nelson Rockefeller and, finally, Richard Nixon can we appreciate the magnitude of his contribution to the theory of diplomacy, grand strategy and nuclear deterrence. 
 
Drawing not only on Kissinger's hitherto closed private papers but also on documents from more than a hundred archives around the world, this biography is Niall Ferguson's masterpiece. Like his classic two-volume history of the House of Rothschild, Kissinger sheds dazzling new light on an entire era.

I acquired valuable knowledge, elegantly conveyed

The book illustrates just what an extraordinary human being Kissinger is

this is a superb history of the modern world as well as a biography of Kissinger... Ferguson's tour de force shows that because Kissinger was a refugee from horror he understood from the day he first saw the Statue of Liberty that US engagement is vital to the peaceful development of the world

Ferguson is undoubtedly persuasive in presenting the young Kissinger as a man of ideals as well as ideas.  His advantage as the authorised biographer, deployed with full force, has been access to a vast mass of previously unseen private correspondence that reveals his subject as nothing like the calucating cold fish of legend

With his usual meticulous research, Ferguson is master of all his work surveys. At least as important, he writes in an unobtrusive but compelling style that carries the reader along with unforced ease. Even on its own, the first volume of Ferguson's life of Kissinger is a great work about a great man by - it has to be admitted - a great historian. It should be read, and enjoyed, by every serious student of the history of our times

For big, bold and compelling, it is impossible to ignore Kissinger - 1923-1968: the idealist (Allen Lane), the first volume of Niall Ferguson's biography of Henry Kissinger, which asks us to reconsider America's best-known "realist" as more Kantian than Machiavellian, more Castlereagh than Meternich, at least up to 1968, when President Nixon first granted the Harvard academic high office.

Some might question whether Ferguson really needs 1000 pages to tell half of Kissinger's life. Other will revel in the wealth of detail on this most controversial of American statesman

a formidably detailed, closely argued study of the making of one of the giants of 20th-century foreign policy

No American statesman has been as revered and as reviled as Henry Kissinger. Hailed by some as the "indispensable man", whose advice has been sought by every president from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush, Kissinger has also attracted immense hostility from critics who have cast him as an amoral Machiavellian - the ultimate cold-blooded "realist". 
 
In this remarkable book, the first of two volumes, Niall Ferguson has created an extraordinary panorama of Kissinger's world, and a paradigm-shifting reappraisal of the man. Drawing not only on Kissinger's hitherto closed private papers but also on documents from more than a hundred archives around the world, this biography is Niall Ferguson's masterpiece. Like his classic two-volume history of the House of Rothschild, Kissinger sheds dazzling new light on an entire era.

Somme And Ancre, 1916

The Middle Parts of Fortune

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A moving, raw and powerful novel about fighting on the front - 'The finest and noblest book of men in war that I have ever read' (Ernest Hemingway) 
 
Bourne is a private fighting on the front. He is under pressure to accept a commission and become an officer, but he prefers to be among the ranks, drawn into the universal struggle for survival in a world gone mad. 
 
Manning's startling work is unlike any other First World War novel in its portrayal of the lives of ordinary British soldiers: the trauma of the Somme; the moments of bloodlust; the camaraderie, rivalry, alcohol and boredom. Considered obscene for its language and previously published in censored form as Her Privates We, The Middle Parts of Fortune appears here in its raw, unexpurgated version.

Outstanding. Almost certainly the finest work of its kind to emerge from the war

I read it over once each year to remember how things really were

The finest novel to come out of the First World War

Niall Ferguson

Magisterial reach ... immensely readable ... Ferguson [applies] his prodigious intellect to placing the present pandemic on a wider historic canvas.

This is not just about a virus but a collision of politics, panic, digital media, human behaviour and incompetence. Niall Ferguson's Doom looks at each of these aspects, putting them into historical perspective in a book of dazzling range and rigour.

Niall Ferguson's Doom is often insightful, productively provocative and downright brilliant.

A superb history of the lost art of handling a crisis.

Stimulating ... Each chapter of this thought-provoking book is worth reading for the ideas, perceptiveness and well-told stories of landmark events ... It's a useful reminder that what may feel like having unprecedented restrictions imposed on our lives today is nothing new... readers will find much to relish.

Elegant, pacey, gripping ... a wealth of deep research.

Doom covers an impressive sweep of history at a lively narrative clip and weaves a lot of disparate strands together into an engaging picture.

Timely and refreshing ... An informative, amusing and thought-provoking read that is full of steadying good sense for these troubled times.

Performs a crucial public service ... Doom is far more than just a page-turner, though that it certainly is: it's that most precious of things in a history book - an account of the past that truly helps us understand where we are today.

Disasters are inherently hard to predict. But when catastrophe strikes, we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted or medieval Italians when the Black Death struck. We have science on our side, after all. Yet the responses of many developed countries to a new pathogen from China were badly bungled. Why? 
 
While populist rulers certainly performed poorly in the face of the pandemic, Niall Ferguson argues that more profound pathologies were at work - pathologies already visible in our responses to earlier disasters. 
 
Drawing from multiple disciplines, including economics and network science, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe offers not just a history but a general theory of disaster. As Ferguson shows, governments must learn to become less bureaucratic if we are to avoid the impending doom of irreversible decline.

Niall Ferguson

Praise for Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe

Magisterial reach ... immensely readable ... Ferguson [applies] his prodigious intellect to placing the present pandemic on a wider historic canvas.

This is not just about a virus but a collision of politics, panic, digital media, human behaviour and incompetence. Niall Ferguson's Doom looks at each of these aspects, putting them into historical perspecti ...

Niall Ferguson's Doom is often insightful, productively provocative and downright brilliant.

Magisterial reach ... immensely readable ... Ferguson [applies] his prodigious intellect to placing the present pandemic on a wider historic canvas.

This is not just about a virus but a collision of politics, panic, digital media, human behaviour and incompetence. Niall Ferguson's Doom looks at each of these aspects, putting them into historical perspecti ...

Niall Ferguson's Doom is often insightful, productively provocative and downright brilliant.

Magisterial reach ... immensely readable ... Ferguson [applies] his prodigious intellect to placing the present pandemic on a wider historic canvas.

This is not just about a virus but a collision of politics, panic, digital media, human behaviour and incompetence. Niall Ferguson's Doom looks at each of these aspects, putting them into historical perspecti ...

Niall Ferguson's Doom is often insightful, productively provocative and downright brilliant.

Books by Niall Ferguson

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