Product Details
Print Length: 442 pages
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 158648768X
Publisher: PublicAffairs (May 27, 2014)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B00IHGVRJM
The world was wild for gold. After discovering the Americas, and under pressure to defend their vast dominion, the Habsburgs of Spain promoted gold and silver exploration in the New World with ruthless urgency. But, the great influx of wealth brought home by plundering conquistadors couldn’t compensate for the Spanish government’s extraordinary military spending, which would eventually bankrupt the country multiple times over and lead to the demise of the great empire.
Gold became synonymous with financial dependability, and following the devastating chaos of World War I, the gold standard came to express the order of the free market system. Warfare in pursuit of wealth required borrowing—a quickly compulsive dependency for many governments. And when people lost confidence in the promissory notes and paper currencies issued during wartime, governments again turned to gold.
In this captivating historical study, Kwarteng exposes a pattern of war-waging and financial debt—bedmates like April and taxes that go back hundreds of years, from the French Revolution to the emergence of modern-day China. His evidence is as rich and colorful as it is sweeping. And it starts and ends with gold.
5/5 Beg, borrow, or steal -- but buy this book!
By John Johnson on August 1, 2014
This is an excellent book. Clearly written, full of facts but never boring. I first read it on my basic Kindle, and then bought the paper copy because I needed to go back and forth, re-read sections to learn the material thoroughly. War And Gold is a very complete history of the ebb and flow of nations, relative to the security and worth of their currency. To be clear -- and this is important -- the writer is not a fanatical 'gold bug', advocating a return to the gold standard of the 1800s, nor is he an rabid Keynesian 'just print the money' advocate. As a result, this book has balance -- very, very important if you want to get a handle on international financial affairs, and where we are heading -- in this new 21st century where most major economies are printing lots of money, still recovering from the '08 Crash. 'Most' meaning all the usual suspects, except, well, China. What's coming next? Read the book. And get the paperback -- for this one, it's much more usable than the Kindle version, well worth the small amount of extra money. Five stars, only because I can't give it ten!
I believe that this book will teach its readers about the accumulation of gold and wealth in countries and how it was able to move between them. This book will also give the readers forethought about what is to come when dealing with the shifts of money.
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