Money

MONEY.
The object of our desires.
The engine of our genius.
Humanity’s greatest invention.

Whether we like it or not, our world revolves around money, but we rarely stop to think about it. What is money, where does it come from, and can it run out? What is this substance that drives trade, revolutions and discoveries; inspires art, philosophy and science? In this illuminating, sometimes irreverent, and often surprising journey, economist David McWilliams charts the relationship between humans and money – from a tally stick in ancient Africa to coins in Republican Greece, from mathematics in the medieval Arab world to the French Revolution, and from the emergence of the US dollar right up to today’s cryptocurrency and beyond. Along the way, we meet a host of characters who have innovated with money, disrupting society and changing the way we live, in an ongoing monetary evolution that has, for the last 5000 years, animated human progress. McWilliams unlocks the mysteries and power of money, explaining why it matters and how it shapes our world. The story of money is the story of earth’s most inventive, destructive, and dangerous animal: Homo sapiens. It is our story.

‘McWilliams has a great knack for bringing a complex economics story to life. He is also funny. In economics, that’s a rare and persuasive combination’ Irish Times

Author Biography

David McWilliams strives to demystify economics and make the topic accessible to audiences worldwide. Formerly an economist for Irish Central Bank, UBS, and Banque Nationale de Paris, he is a prolific author, podcaster, journalist, documentarian, and broadcaster. He is the founder of the world’s only economics and stand-up comedy festival, “Kilkenomics,” which the Financial Times called “the best economics conference in the world.” McWilliams has written five books, writes a weekly column for The Irish Times and contributes regularly to the Financial Times. A faculty member at Trinity Business School at Trinity College, Dublin, he’s been described as being to economics what David Attenborough is to the natural sciences and Brian Cox is to physics. He lives in Dublin, Ireland.