| "Although THE ASCENT OF MONEY is pockmarked by digressions (about things like the Black-Scholes model of options pricing) that many lay readers will find arcane and difficult to understand, the book as a whole is animated by Mr. Ferguson's narrative gifts, among them his ability to discuss complex ideas in user-friendly terms. He also has a knack for illustrating his larger hypotheses with colorful stories about people like Nathan Rothschild... the Scottish economist and gambler John Law...; and the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman and his so-called Chicago Boys, who helped bring economic reforms to Pinochet's Chile." - Michiko Kakutani 12/02/2008 "Whatever one thinks of his arguments, it's impossible to ignore Niall Ferguson. He's like the brightest kid in the debating club, the one who pulls all-nighters in the library and ferrets out facts no one thought to uncover. And in his latest book, THE ASCENT OF MONEY...Ferguson takes us on an often enlightening and enjoyable spelunking tour through the underside of great events, a lesson in how the most successful great powers have always been underpinned by smart money." - Michael Hirsh 12/28/2008 "The curses and the blessings, the seductions and the traps of money, give Niall Ferguson the most redolent of subjects for THE ASCENT OF MONEY, his excellent, just-in-time guide to the history of finance and financial crisis." - Shelby Coffey III 11/30/2008 "[A] magnificently entertaining and provocative new book....The origins of the book as a television series are apparent. The rapid shift of perspective is great fun, though an academic would say that it would be helpful to have a systematic exploration of the thesis of financial evolution. That would lead to the loss of some of the verve and vim with which the tale of financial genius and financial folly and skullduggery are interwoven." - Harold James 03/27/2009 |
