Niall Ferguson's The Ascent Of Money

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Have you ever finish a book and said to yourself “Wow, I am going to reread this book again.”? Unfourntly, “The Ascent of Money” by Niall Ferguson isn’t a book where you will likely reread after the first read instead you will be saying “Is it finally over?” “The Ascent of Money” by Niall Ferguson explains how money came to be in our society by starting off where we see the first use of currency to the end where money has become something we can’t even touch. As a person who isn’t interested in the history of money but interested instead of looking at the numbers going up, I believe “The Ascent of Money” by Niall Ferguson gives a decent insight on the history of money. Even though the book gives a decent insight on the history of money it …show more content…
The goal of the book was to better understand the rise of money and how it came to be. As I was reading I found the non-money parts more interesting such as learning how Japan was a successful welfare state. I always knew Japan was advance in technology, but I never knew they were a successful welfare state. Japan welfare was successful because it guaranteed a standard of living for anyone. “The Advisory Council created a system where “the needy will be guaranteed the minimum standard of living by national assistance.” (Ferguson 208). I never knew that which took away from the thesis of the book. The same thing happen when I was reading about the South Cotton Trade and how it wouldn’t have backfired “If the South had managed to hold on to New Orleans until the cotton harvest had been offloaded to Europe, they might have managed to sell more than three million pounds of cotton bonds to London.” (Ferguson 97). These small tidbits took away from the goal of the book. If Ferguson took out these small tidbits and focus on the bare bones of money, I would understand how the information played a role of understanding money and how it came to …show more content…
Most authors start off strong at the beginning and at the end to make you forget about how terrible the middle is. Yeah, the book is boring, but Ferguson tries to be consistent throughout the book. In the beginning, Ferguson stated “If this book helps to break down that dangerous barrier which has arisen between financial knowledge and other kinds of knowledge, then I shall not have toiled in vain.” (Ferguson 17). Ferguson was excited to talk to us about money and hope his work wasn’t a waste. If I go somewhere in the middle of the book, I still see this same excitement he had in the introduction. An example of this is when he was talking about the differences between China and the United States, Ferguson stated “At first sight, it may seem bizarre. Today the average American earns more than $34,000 a year. Despite the wealth of people like Wu Yajun and Yin Mingsha, the average Chinese lives on less than $2,000. Why would the latter want, in effect, to lend money to the former, who is twenty-two times richer?” (Ferguson 335). Ferguson tries to make you not bored but instead to think about why this is happening and then goes on to later answer your question. Most books keep the middle sections boring because by the time you get to the end you would have forgotten how terrible the middle

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