Money

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A sweeping historical epic that traces the development and evolution of one of humankind's greatest inventions and explores how we understand-and misunderstand-its meaning and its use: from its origins in the ancient world to the gold standard, from Adam Smith to the shadow banking system and the Great Recession.What is money, and how does it work? In this major work of economic history, Felix Martin-an associate of the Soros Institute for New Economic Thinking-challenges nothing less than our conventional understanding of money. He describes how the Western idea of money emerged from interactions between Mesopotamia and ancient Greece and was shaped over the centuries by tensions between sovereigns and the emerging middle classes. He explores the world's complicated monetary systems, from the Pacific island of Yap, where value is measured in immovable stones to the currency that exists solely on globally connected computer screens. Martin shows that money has always...