Skip to main content

The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson

Not up to the standards of Ferguson's very good biography of Kissinger. A highly derivative (heh) history of money that jumps around, covers certain eras in depth, others superficially, and others by parroting what other historians have already done better. 

I'll share two glaring examples of "parroting": 

1) The latter part of the book (particularly the portions discussion the late 1990s tech boom, the failures of Enron and the collapse of Long Term Capital) read more like an airplane bookstore business book, summarizing other, better books (see "When Genius Failed" for example) and standard media stories from that era. 

2) Much of the discussion of market bubbles (France's Mississippi Bubble and John Law scandal, the 1929 bubble and crash, etc) contains no original work or research, just regurgitations of standard bubble history books like Mackay's "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" and Kindleberger's "Manias, Panics and Crashes." 

It strikes me that Ferguson did some meaningful original research on Dutch and Italian financial innovations as well as on innovations in insurance and actuarial science in Scotland, but he mailed it in on these other aspects of the book. 

Further, the reader gets the impression that Ferguson may understand many of the conventions of modern finance (eg: Black Scholes pricing models, CDOs, RMBS, interest rate swaps, etc.) but he doesn't understand them well enough to explain them in plain language. 

Finally, a thought about the overconfidence of historians when looking at the past vs their predictions about the future. This work contains many sentences like "It is wholly unsurprising" when event Y follows event X. This is the confident language of the historian who isn't "surprised" by what's going to happen next... because it already happened! It's narrative fallacy combined with epistemic overconfidence, both used to make a "postdiction." But when this author makes *pre*dictions (like the hilariously incorrect "bond insurance companies seem destined to disappear") we see that historians--even epistemically confident ones--know no more about the future than the rest of us.

More Posts

A Technique for Producing Ideas by James Webb Young

It's a rare pleasure to find so many insights in such a short book. A modern reader can't help but notice the stark contrast between A Technique for Producing Ideas  and most modern books, which might have a few paragraphs' worth of insights, but yet always seem to be fluffed and padded out to at least 200-300 pages. The author gives away a formula for creativity and idea generation that is simple, but not easy. And as a result almost no one will follow it. In the author's own one-paragraph summary, his process is: * First, the gathering of raw materials--both the materials of your immediate problem and the materials which come from a constant enrichment of your store of general knowledge.  * Second, the working over of these materials in your mind.  * Third, the incubating stage, where you let something beside the conscious mind do the work of synthesis.  * Fourth, the actual birth of the Idea--the 'Eureka! I have it!' stage. * And fifth, the final shaping and ...
Read more

Confessions of a Medical Heretic by Robert S. Mendelsohn, MD

"I have written this book precisely to scare and to radicalize people before they are hurt. Let this book be your radicalizing experience." The more I come into contact with modern medicine, the more I've watched my elders' lives intersect with it, the more I've observed the field's neomania and accompanying iatrogenic harms, the more I realize that everyone--everyone!--should read the following four books: H. Gilbert Welch: Less Medicine, More Health Ivan Illich: Medical Nemesis Dr. John Sarno: The Divided Mind Robert S. Mendelsohn: Confessions of a Medical Heretic While reading these works, it will be worth noting your internal reaction to them. Do you agree? Do you strongly reject? Why? And what might this indicate about your attachment to your existing beliefs about medicine? In Confession of a Medical Heretic , author Dr. Robert Mendelsohn frames up modern medicine as a type of religion, complete with priests (read: doctors), sacraments, rituals, and even...
Read more

Before the Dawn by Shimazaki Toson

A fascinating, stately novel about idealists who get chewed up and spit out by the very social changes they seek. Before the Dawn takes place in the decades following Japan's 1853 "Black Ships" event, when the USA's Commodore Perry arrived, unannounced and uninvited, to force Japan to open itself to world trade. Perry's arrival, one of history's more blatant examples of gunboat diplomacy , sent shock waves throughout the island nation, resulting in a complex political and social revolution, civil war, and, eventually, a radically changed Japanese state. [A quick  affiliate link to readers to the book here . You can support my work here by buying all your Amazon products via any affiliate link from this site, or my sister site  Casual Kitchen . Thank you!] The main character, Hanzo, is the son of a village leader on the highway between Edo and Kyoto. He is sensitive, idealistic, and he dreams of a restoration of traditional Japanese values, both intellectual a...
Read more