The Ascent of Money, by Niall Fergusson
New from Niall Ferguson: the book of the film, or rather, of the series. At any moment now his financial history of the world will take to the small screen and emerge on Channel Four. Programmers and publishers have learned to synchronise these things.
It will be a brave effort, all the same, because finance is not exactly popular just now and has always been unresponsive to film. When Bank Rate comes down, television news producers fall back on a stock picture of the Bank of England, looking like a cheese-mould with a graph imposed on it.
Ferguson helps them out by setting scenes. His book takes us to Chongqing, on the banks of the mighty earth-brown River Yangtse, to meet two of the new breed of Chinese billionaires — she is a property tycoon, he exports motor-bikes.
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