"Before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods-that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors-which lives on in full force to this day. So says anthropologist David Graeber in a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom....

"This book will change the way you look at money. Money may seem hopelessly mundane and culturally meaningless, but it has dominated - and documented - world history since the time of the ancient Greeks. This heavily illustrated book provides a spirited account of the first coinages and their living descendants in our pockets and purses. It explains how people from Jesus to The Beatles have used numismatics to explore the social, political, economic,...

Money only works because we all agree to believe in it. In Money, Jacob Goldstein shows how money is a useful fiction that has shaped societies for thousands of years, from the rise of coins in ancient Greece to the first stock market in Amsterdam to the emergence of shadow banking in the 21st century. At the heart of the story are the fringe thinkers and world leaders who reimagined money. Kublai Khan, the Mongol emperor, created paper money backed...

"Half fable, half manifesto, this brilliant new take on the ancient concept of cash lays bare its unparalleled capacity to empower, enchant, and control us. Frederick Kaufman tackles the complex history of money, beginning with the earliest myths and wrapping up with Wall Street's byzantine present-day doings. Along the way, he exposes a set of allegorical plots, stock characters, and stereotypical metaphors that have long been linked with money and...

"This is the story of the idealists, technologists, and opportunists fighting to bring cryptocurrency to the masses. Cryptocurrency was growing increasingly marginal until a brilliant new idea changed its fortunes once again: Ethereum. In this book, Laura Shin takes readers inside the creation of this new form of cryptocurrency network, which enabled users to launch their own new coins, and in so doing, created a new crypto fever. The fortunes of...