This is a fairly quick read about money of course. This starts with methods that civilizations started to use in the making of coins. Did you know that in the 1200's the Chinese were pushing an economic revolution that quite possibly showed that were possibly the richest and the most technologically advanced civilization of its time. They were responsible for paper, printing and the magnetic compass.
They describe different types of coins, can you imagine carrying around a coin that was two feet long and weighed forty-three pounds ? The book describes how the first stock market started. It also describes how the gold standard came about and the good and bad about it. Do you remember the 2008 housing bubble ? Besides what you may know from things like the big short this gives you a little information from a different angle and all easily understood. This ends with the start and development of the latest money tool crypto-currency. This a great informational book about what most of love and need to survive.

Unfortunately, this book and I didn't click. The information simply wasn't presented in a way that worked as a book. Each chapter was a cute little story - but presented at such a high level that it didn't leave me with actual any understanding of how things worked. There was nothing that inspired me to truly think or engage with the text - I would close the book and immediately forget what I had just read. Every sentence was an interesting fact, but there was no overarching theme or narrative. I didn't understand why I was being told what.

Having read books that go much more in depth on these topics - like Capital or Debt - I was also honestly pretty skeptical about some of the massively broad claims the author was making, without sufficient detail to back it up. I was frequently confused why I should care about things that were being told to me (still not sure why gambling probabilities matter in the scheme of history of money)?

This reads like a podcast - not a unified non-fiction book.

Money is a loaded subject. That’s probably my best pun on this thing, but no guarantees I won’t try again. At any rate, it’s a fascinating subject. The made up thing of the most realistic proportions. Proverbially, it’s either (erroneously, it’s the love of…) connected to evil or makes the world go around. Presumably it can’t buy you love or make you happy, but it can buy or make you just about any other thing. So why not learn more about the actual mechanics of it? Especially when a book specifically designed to do just that just appears on Netgalley. Yes, it was time. And lean I did. I actually read the book in one day, which speaks volumes to its readability alone. But the author didn’t just make it accessible, it’s actually engaging. Not as humorous as I often prefer my serious nonfiction reads to be and not as opinionated or more like not as one or the other way leaning as some of nonfiction (especially on a subject as divisive as this one) tends to be, but a very enjoyable read all the same, this book takes you from the early days of the very invention of money to making it more practical and usable (paper money, thanks China) to making it the very soul of commerce that conquered and now rules the world. Whatever your thoughts on money, however inherently wrong the mindless pursuit of it before all others might be…let’s face it, you can use more. It’s just one of those things. No one actually needs the knowledge of economic theories to know where they stand on money. But some may want it…like I did. I was very interested in the backstory of it all and this book didn’t disappoint, in fact it educated the cr*p out of me. I learn new things and gained more theoretical knowledge of and historical context for the things I already knew or kind of knew. Some of it is pretty dense, like money markets and all the things leading up to the 2008 nightmare. Some of it is pure politics or at least economic politics, like the creation of Euro. Some of it is just an epic saga of arriving at logic…like the up and down tale of gold standard. Oh how about learning the origins of Luddites. Or meeting the man who created modern banking. Yeah, all that and so much more. And all of it…so interesting and, to the author’s credit, strikingly lively. Did I want more photos? Yes. Nerding out over some of the early moneys and so on would have been fun. But that’s what the internet’s for. Granted, you can probably learn most of this on the internet too, but for me…this is a preferred format. A well written, well put together book loaded with fascinating facts and edifying information. I can’t say this is a definitive historical account of money, there have been so many, the author cites so many, but…this is fresh, current, smart, balanced and fun. Might be a morbid reading during a financial crisis. But then again, for me anyway, knowledge is knowledge and smart is good, irrespective of the cr*appiness of the world outside. After all, the cr*appiness of world outside can almost always be directly linked to the scarcity of knowledge and paucity of smart. So yeah, read this book, learn things, be your best smartest self. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.