Niall Ferguson's The Ascent Of Money

In the book The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson, Ferguson goes back in time to emphasize that money and the history of finance is the central dogma of human history. As I began the book I was instantly intrigued how Ferguson chose various verbs to name money instead of using the most common one. As I continued the text I realized that it was confusing due to its lack of organization in the timeline of history. None the less he has a solid case in his book about the world of finance, he explained how it affected humanity over time and gave multiple examples about it. Ferguson gives an in-depth historical look at money and finance. He goes back in time to ancient Mesopotamia, and finishes his book with predictions for the near future based …show more content…
Ferguson gave multiple great examples of how the evolution of money helped evolve human kind for the better, but at the same time Ferguson explained how he sees the same trends now that he saw in the past which will cause history to repeat itself. From the trends he sees now, he predicts that China’s economy will decline rapidly do to the extraordinary growth in their economy that has taken place over the past thirty years (Ferguson 284). He believes the bubble will burst and will bring their economy down just as fast as it increased. This will cause China and America to go to war (Ferguson 339). Ferguson did a great job in this chapter, although we cannot be certain of what the future holds for humanity he had a great vision for it. The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson was not my favorite book to read due to the fact that I did not like his organization style. On the other hand, I did enjoy that Ferguson highlighted a lot of interesting information about history that defined todays life. I recommend this book if chronological order does not matter to you and the constant switch between timelines does not bother