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Ask HN: A Book on the History of Money?

3 points by pallas_athena ↗ HN
I read & loved Cryptonomicon. The parts abut creating a currency were really interesting.

I am now reading The Baroque Cycle and I'm finding the little tidbits about the history of money/currency/stock exchange even more interesting.

I tried to sift through a couple of interviews and AMA by Stephenson, but I couldn't find a source (or sources) from which he derives these info.

Do you have any recommendations? I am looking for something really broad, like from ancient times to modern day, and possibly written for someone who doesn't know a lot about economics.

6 comments

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vpaulus
”The Ascent of Money” by Niall Ferguson
Archelaos
> ... someone who doesn't know a lot about economics

Not exactly what you were asking for, but if you are also interested in learning about economics in general, I can highly recommend "Economics" by Ha-Joon Chang as an introduction.

smokel
A few years ago I wanted to focus more on the _positive_ aspects of capitalism, because I had been quite negative about it for a long time. It turned out that I knew very little about capitalism, and I have changed my views quite a bit.

One of the most helpful books to learn about the history of capitalism for me was "The Cambridge History of Capitalism" (2014). I'm not sure how fast this field progresses, so it might already be a bit dated?

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-history-of-ca...

splix
"The Origins of Business, Money, and Markets" by Keith Roberts (Columbia Business School Publishing)