Money: A Story of Humanity
| By: | David McWilliams |
| Publisher: | Simon & Schuster Ltd |
| Published: | September 2024 |
| Pages: | 416 |
| Categories: | History culture, Politics, Technology |
| Language: | English |
| Available as: | Hardback, Paperback, Audio |
| On sale at: |
MONEY. The object of our desires. The engine of our genius. Humanity’s greatest invention. Money is everything. It brings freedom and it takes it away. It inspires and corrupts us. But what is money? Is it the main thing holding us back from utopia or is it the one constant that’s driven us to success? In his illuminating, entertaining and often surprising book, economist David McWilliams charts the relationship between humans and money – from clay tablets in Mesopotamia to coins in Ancient 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. Along the way, we meet a host of characters who have innovated with money, disrupting society and transforming the way we live. Like humanity, money is ever changing, adapting to its time and circumstances. The question is, over the last 5000 years, have we changed money or has money changed us? Money tells an astonishing new story of our species. Taking the reader on an epic journey through the history of money, McWilliams reveals its fundamental role in our society.
Other Books From this Category
-
10 Oct 2025 - Four Courts Press Ltd
Siege in Ireland, 1641-53
Siege was the defining experience of the grindingly brutal and consequential Irish Wars of Religion (1641–53). Civilians were more likely to encounter siege warfare as participants and as victims th...
-
18 Sep 2025 - Hachette Books Ireland
Love in a Time of Politics: A Memoir of Facing Loss and Finding Hope
During Katherine Zappone's second year in ministerial office, her wife Ann Louise Gilligan suffered a major brain haemorrhage that left her blind - a tragedy marking the beginning of a profound transf...
-
12 Sep 2025 - Joanne Sweeney
AI Playbook: The Strategic Guide to AI for Marketing and Communications
Will you lead or be left behind in the AI era? From Joanne Sweeney, a globally recognised digital communications authority with over 25 years of experience, comes AI Playbook, the ultimate guide for ...
-
8 Aug 2025 - Wordwell
Soupers and Jumpers: The Protestant Missions in Connemara, 1838-1947
"Soupers and Jumpers: The Protestant Missions in Connemara, 1838-1947" by Miriam Moffitt, is a historical account of the Protestant missions established in Connemara during the mid-19th century. The b...
-
29 Jul 2025 - National Traveller MABS
Access to Credit Facilities for the Traveller Community in the Greater Dublin Area 1997
By Paul Quinn
Exchange House Travellers Money Advice and Budgeting Service was set up in 1998 in response to a research report compiled by Paul Quinn and Thomas McCann “Access to Credit Facilities for the Trave...
-
6 Jun 2025 - The Journal of Music
The Radical Thinking of Desmond Fennell
By Toner Quinn
Desmond Fennell, who died in 2021, was one of Ireland’s great independent thinkers. A writer, essayist and public intellectual, he brought a fresh perspective to debates on Irish identity, language,...
-
2 Jun 2025 - educate.ie
Ignite
-
1 Jun 2025 - Merrion Press
Pure Gold
By Eamon Carr
In the late 1980s Horslips lyricist and drummer Eamon Carr began his journalistic career by conducting interviews with an eclectic mix of famous people. Told in Carr’s immediate, entertaining style,...
-
30 May 2025 - Four Courts Press Ltd
Killester: from medieval manor to garden suburb: Dublin - Shaping the Suburbs
"Killester: from medieval manor to garden suburb" explores the development of Killester from its earliest days as Killester Demense, through its transformation in the early twentieth century as a gard...
-
22 May 2025 - Merrion Press
Catastrophe: Nakba II
By Fintan Drury
The Nakba or ‘Catastrophe’ occurred between 1947 and 1949 and saw 15,000 Palestinians massacred and more than 700,000 expelled from their homeland by Israel. Today, we’re witnessing a second Nak...
-
22 May 2025 - Gill
The Secret Life of Leinster House: What you really need to know about how the country is run
By Gavan Reilly
What is it like to run for election? How do public representatives deal with the cut-throat competition from their rivals – and their own running mates? What’s the Dáil bar really like? And why...
-
9 May 2025 - Eriu
Plentiful Country
Uncover the gripping narrative of Irish immigrants who transformed America in the aftermath of the Great Hunger. Tyler Anbinder's landmark work exposes the grit and resilience of the Famine Irish, def...
-
1 May 2025 - Apollo
Land Is All That Matters
By Myles Dungan
In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe everyone lived 'off the land' in one way or another. In Ireland, however, almost everyone lived 'on the land' as well. Agriculture was the only economic re...
-
10 Apr 2025 - Apollo
Burn Them Out!: A History of Fascism and the Far Right in Ireland
In November 2023, the Dublin riots shocked Ireland and the wider world. They were sparked by a knife attack by an immigrant on three children. Inflammatory online rumours spread in minutes. Part of th...
-
7 Apr 2025 - Merrion Press
Death in Derry: Martin McGuinness and the Derry IRA’s War Against the British
‘I was in the Army over thirty years and Derry was the most resentful place I ever served, even the dogs hated us.’ When civil rights protests in the 1960s gave way to armed struggle, the Provi...
-
4 Apr 2025 - Institute of Public Administration
A Pathway to Homeownership: The Role of Tenant Purchase in Ireland
Since the foundation of the Irish state, nearly two-thirds of all local authority housing has been sold to sitting tenants at significant discounts through various tenant purchase schemes. For decades...
-
20 Mar 2025 - Rising Voices Publishing
EQUITY IN THE WORKPLACE: STORIES OF BLACK IRISH WOMEN IN ACADEMIA AND THE TEACHING PROFESSION
By Ebun Joseph
Why, in 2025, are Irish staff rooms still overwhelmingly white? Why are professors still almost exclusively white? This powerful and timely book amplifies the voices of Black and African Irish wome...
-
20 Mar 2025 - Rising Voices Publishing
EQUITY IN THE WORKPLACE
-
5 Jun 2024 - Kenny Photo Graphics
Misery Rock: A story of survival at sea and stormy relationships on land.
-
1 Apr 2024 - Wordwell
The Irish Construction Cycle 1970-2023: Policies and Escape Routes
Other Books From this Author
-
19 Apr 2019 - Gill
'Renaissance Nation: How the Pope's Children Rewrote the Rules for Ireland'
'Here David McWilliams presents the story of modern Ireland. Surveying four decades, bookended by the visits of the pope in September 1979 and August 2018, he explores how Ireland has become one of th...
-
9 Nov 2018 - Gill
'Renaissance Nation: How the Pope's Children Rewrote the Rules for Ireland'
'Renaissance Nation is a thrilling account of Ireland's vertiginous rise and a timely exploration of its conflicted present, where stark decisions await the next generation of would-be revolutionaries...
-
3 Jan 2014 - Gill & McMillan
The Generation Game
After ten years of a boom and on the eve of a downturn, Irish society has been turned on its head by a Generation War. The clear winners have been the middle-aged Jagger Generation, enormously enriche...
-
25 Oct 2012 - Penguin Books Ltd
The Good Room: Why We Ended Up in a Debtors' Prison - and How We Can Break Free
Ireland is deeply in debt, beholden to the IMF, the EU and the bond markets. Its economy is frozen, and years of austerity are ahead. It didn't have to be this way - and it doesn't have to be this way...
-
29 May 2012 - Gill & Macmillan Ltd
'The Generation Game'
Written by David McWilliams in 2007 The Generation Game has an eerie precognisance of what has happen in subsequent years. In his astute and witty style, McWilliams outlined where he thought Ireland w...
-
1 Apr 2010 - Gill & McMillan
Follow the Money
The Pope's Children are turning 30 and in the four years since David McWilliams introduced us to the generation that could have had it all, the Pope's Children have been betrayed. This book is about r...
-
23 May 2006 - Gill
'The Pope's Children'
This pheomonal bestseller, first published in 2005, was a true portrait of the times. Meet The Pope's Children, the beneficiaries of Wonderbra Economics. This is the special generation, the Irish bab...
-
26 Nov 2005 - Gill
'The Pope's Children'
Takes the reader to the Deckland, a suburban state of mind where you'll find the Kells Angels, and introduces the HiCos - Hiberno-Cosmopolitansan. This book is an antidote to the endless pessimism of ...
