*AS HEARD ON RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK*

THE INTERNATIONAL #1 BESTSELLER
SHORTLISTED FOR THE AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARDS 2024 NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR
A WATERSTONES NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024
AN OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024
AN ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024
A FINANCIAL TIMES ECONOMICS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024
A PROSPECT BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024

'A breathtaking, expansive and imaginative ride through the history and future of money from an author who truly understands it' PROFESSOR BRIAN COX

'Exceptional' FINANCIAL TIMES

​'A cracking book that is as enjoyable as it is readable' PETER FRANKOPAN

'Equally entertaining and insightful' YANIS VAROUFAKIS
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MONEY.
The object of our desires.
The engine of our genius.
Humanity's greatest invention.

Money is everything. It brings freedom and it takes it away. It inspires and corrupts us. But what is money? Is it the main thing holding us back from utopia or is it the one constant that's driven us to success?

In his illuminating, entertaining and often surprising book, economist David McWilliams charts the relationship between humans and money - from clay tablets in Mesopotamia to coins in Ancient Greece, from mathematics in the medieval Arab world to the French Revolution, and from the emergence of the US dollar right up to today's cryptocurrency. Along the way, we meet a host of characters who have innovated with money, disrupting society and transforming the way we live. Like humanity, money is ever changing, adapting to its time and circumstances. The question is, over the last 5000 years, have we changed money or has money changed us?
Money tells an astonishing new story of our species. Taking the reader on an epic journey through the history of money, McWilliams reveals its fundamental role in our society.
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'An impressive journey that fizzes with facts' ECONOMIST

'An eye-opening history of what makes the world go round' EVENING STANDARD

'David McWilliams is the best explainer of economics I know' SIMON KUPER

'Compelling, funny and original' KATJA HOYER

'If, as David McWilliams complains, economists take the fun out of money, then he is the exception that proves the rule: a man who could not write a boring sentence if he tried' TOM HOLLAND

Money. It's as fundamental to our lives as air, water, fire and earth. It is the fifth element, without which humankind would struggle to survive.

Now, global economist David McWilliams has written a brilliantly original book to tie in with a major TV series exploring our relationship with money and how it sustains the existence of civilisation as we know it. In Money, McWilliams aims to do for cash what David Attenborough did for the Planet: to unlock its mysteries, its limitations and its awesome power. We journey all across the world, through the present and the past, to survey the ever-evolving dynamics of money in a way that has never been seen before. We'll go from the birthplace of money in the Middle East to where trade began along the silk road to China; we'll explore markets from Marrakech to Wall Street. We'll uncover the dawn of our relationship with money and track its history to more fully understand man's current relationship with it, and its impact on the world right now.

The story of money is the story of modernity. It's the story of our desires, our genius and our downfalls, and has shaped the very essence of what it means to be human. And yet despite money's primacy, most of us don't truly understand it. Where does money come from? How much is out there? Who controls it? Nothing we've invented as a species has defined our own evolution so thoroughly and changed the direction of our planet's history so dramatically. Money is power - and power beguiles, power sparkles and power unleashes our deepest cravings.

So then, the story of Money is the story of earth's most inventive, destructive and dangerous animal, Homo Sapiens. Our story.