A co-host of NPR's Planet Money takes a deep dive into the history of that thing that makes the world go round—revealing money to be a useful fiction that has shaped societies for thousands of years, from the rise of coins in ancient Greece to the first stock market in Amsterdam to the emergence of shadow banking in the 21st century.
There is much ground to cover as Money moves from traders in Sichuan to goldsmiths in London to investors in the Mississippi Territory. Each treatment is necessarily brief, and some readers may want more detail. But stacking up case studies like this means a bigger story—a recurring pattern—begins to appear ... Money should be required reading for every financial regulator ... I would have liked a chapter on underground and informal currencies. People living in the world’s toughest economies use all sorts of monies that are 'made up' ... Money is great preparation for turbulent times: a vibrant and accessible grounding in how the evolution of cash—organic, random and social—really works.
... a courageous attempt to explain one of the most important and complicated of human inventions. And while Goldstein often does an admirable job in clarifying complex, abstract ideas, his book ultimately misses the mark. He’s a fluid and clear stylist, but I got the sense that he was a little too enamored of his own voice. Money has far too many parenthetical asides ... Goldstein also overuses exclamation points, undercutting his own efforts at emphasis. And sometimes both Goldstein’s writing and thinking get a little muddied. At the end of an eminently readable chapter on the invention of probability theory, which was critical to the development of modern finance, Goldstein adds a totally irrelevant retelling of Pascal’s wager ... The problems with this book are truly unfortunate—because at times, Money is quite good. Goldstein’s chapter on Bitcoin is the clearest explanation of the digital currency that I’ve ever read. And his account of the Great Recession’s effects on the European Union perfectly pinpoints the inherent problems of the Eurozone for its poorer members. Goldstein also writes about historical figures who deserve to be better known ... Sadly, the excellent passages in Money don’t quite make up for its defects.
... a courageous attempt to explain one of the most important and complicated of human inventions. And while Goldstein often does an admirable job in clarifying complex, abstract ideas, his book ultimately misses the mark. He’s a fluid and clear stylist, but I got the sense that he was a little too enamored of his own voice. Money has far too many parenthetical asides ... Goldstein also overuses exclamation points, undercutting his own efforts at emphasis. And sometimes both Goldstein’s writing and thinking get a little muddied. At the end of an eminently readable chapter on the invention of probability theory, which was critical to the development of modern finance, Goldstein adds a totally irrelevant retelling of Pascal’s wager ... The problems with this book are truly unfortunate—because at times, Money is quite good. Goldstein’s chapter on Bitcoin is the clearest explanation of the digital currency that I’ve ever read. And his account of the Great Recession’s effects on the European Union perfectly pinpoints the inherent problems of the Eurozone for its poorer members. Goldstein also writes about historical figures who deserve to be better known ... Sadly, the excellent passages in Money don’t quite make up for its defects.
