APRIL 2014 - AudioFile
Using a warm, personal tone, narrator Nicholas Guy Smith makes this dense history of the evolution of money accessible. His precise diction and British accent help establish a rhythm in the detailed explanations of the origins of currency. Listeners will appreciate his deliberate delivery, which makes sense of the kind of complex sentences that are often found in financial titles. Smith's variations in emphasis also serve to help the listener interpret the various case studies that support the book. His use of a slightly higher pitch and nasal tone for quotations from renowned economists shows his creativity in recounting the history of modern money. M.R. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
The New York Times Book Review - Heidi N. Moore
…compulsively readable…Money is a fascinating and entertaining pep talk for bankers, economists and armchair revolutionaries dissatisfied with the current financial system, and an attempt to galvanize them into action.
Publishers Weekly
12/02/2013
Blending history and economic analysis in his engaging first book, economist and bond investor Martin explains the development of sovereign currency and its critically important function in modern economies. This is familiar territory for both economists and non-specialists, but Martin approaches his subject in entertaining fashion, discussing monetarism and monetary theory, from John Locke to the Federal Reserve System. He pauses to consider “excessive accumulation, consumption, and competition for status,” which he dismisses as “hard-wired into the human brain,” though he fails to consider greed in a world divided into asset holders and not. Martin stresses the connection between money and freedom, explaining why money is a “one of the most powerful and important tools of democratic government.” He calls for “radical reform,” but it’s difficult to find Martin’s magic rabbit or discern what his actual reform program would entail. His puzzling Socratic dialogue to try to explain things at the end falls flat. Though possessed of a meaningless subtitle, Martin’s book is breezy, fluent, discursive, and informed. It holds considerable appeal for investors, their bankers, and those drawn to the mechanics of wealth. 19 illus. Agent: Natasha Fairweather. (Mar.)
From the Publisher
Praise for Money:
Finalist for Guardian First Book Award
"'Money is often held to have arisen as a solution to the shortcomings of barter: traders needed a universally acceptable 'medium of exchange.' In this lively history-cum-polemic, Martin says that the theory is 'entirely false,' and that the essence of monetary exchange is not 'the swapping of goods and services for this commodity medium' but a 'system of credit accounts and their clearing.'"
"Compulsively readable . . . Money is a fascinating and entertaining pep talk for bankers, economists and armchair revolutionaries dissatisfied with the current financial system, and an attempt to galvanize them into action."
— Heidi N. Moore, New York Times Book Review
“Felix Martin's remarkable book asks the big question: do economists have any idea what money is? His compelling answer is: no. You may not agree with the answer. But it will certainly force you to think.”
—Martin Wolf, author of Why Globalization Works
“Felix Martin has written a wonderfully original and entertaining history of money. If you have ever wondered why the whole system seems so dangerously and chronically unstable, this is the book to read.”
—Liaquat Ahamed, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lords of Finance
“Felix Martin’s remarkable book Money is economic history–and indeed cultural anthropology–with a difference . . . his sparkling book is worth taking seriously.”
—Raymond Tallis, Prospect
"An excellent book . . . Full of interesting history and insight . . . a beautiful and sometimes even entrancing study of human thought about money."
—Tyler Cowen, Times Literary Supplement
"Blending history and economic analysis in his engaging first book, economist and bond investor Martin explains the development of sovereign currency and its critically important function in modern economies. . . Martin approaches his subject in entertaining fashion, discussing monetarism and monetary theory, from John Locke to the Federal Reserve System. . . Fluent, discursive, and informed. It holds considerable appeal for investors, their bankers, and those drawn to the mechanics of wealth."
—Publishers Weekly
"[A] critical essay fizzing with ideas.”
—Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph
“Stimulating and timely.”
—David Priestland, Guardian
“The virtue of Martin’s book is that it exposes the deep flaws in the way we have traditionally thought about money. The exposition is clear . . . Fresh.”
—Alex Brummer, New Statesman
“Felix Martin condenses the broadest of subjects into a searing and potentially life-changing read that destroys all accepted knowledge of this thing we sell our souls for.”
—Shortlist
“So replete with literary and historical examples that the story almost tells itself . . . a lucid, colorful introduction to 3,000 years of monetary history.”
—Martin Sandbu, Financial Times
“[Martin] wants to change the way you think about money. He rejects the textbook idea that it’s an alternative to barter, the oil in the engine of the world economy. He sees money as a liberating (though unstable) system of creating and exchanging credit. This original and thought-provoking history of what’s in your wallet also offers some controversial solutions to the financial crisis, such as raising inflation levels and writing off national debts.”
—The Guardian (UK) Summer Book Roundup
“A most accessible and thrilling read. If you want to read just one book about money, this is it.”
—Ha-Joon Chang
“Combines breadth of scholarship with a wealth of practical experience in tackling the most elusive of economic subjects–the nature of money.”
—John Kay
“Magnificent–hugely imaginative, clear, coherent.”
—Robert Skidelsky
"[I]n this improbably lively account [...] Martin seeks a deeper understanding, relating money especially to power [...] Refreshingly free of jargon and long on ideas—including the thought that if it’s money that got us into our current mess, it’s money that can get us out of it."
—Kirkus
Kirkus Reviews
2014-01-23
What is money? If you think you know the answer, then you may not have thought hard enough about it, a problem that kings and commoners alike have shared throughout history. The Micronesian residents of the island of Yap, long a case study in the history of money, reckon currency by giant stones that, even if sunk in the ocean and therefore inaccessible, nonetheless have value. Their system matches the symbolic abstraction of money with a concrete basis for it. However, writes investor/economist Martin in this improbably lively account, that concreteness no longer underlies our modern economy: "The vast majority of our national money—around 90 percent in the US, for example, and 97 percent in the UK—has no physical existence at all." So is money merely symbolic? By one measure, perhaps. But Martin seeks a deeper understanding, relating money especially to power: If on one hand it served as an instrument of rule for sovereigns, it also reined in those sovereigns as something even mightier than they. By that light, as one medieval philosopher formulated it, money "is not the property of the sovereign but of the entire community that uses it." Martin expands on this provocative idea, suggesting that money is a system for allocating economic risk "by making a simultaneous promise of stability and freedom." All this talk can get quite heady, and that's not to mention the ancient Chinese proverb that "the fish is the last to know water"—i.e., those of us who use money are so deeply steeped in it that it's hard to think about, let alone answer the more important question: How much power should money have to govern our lives? Refreshingly free of jargon and long on ideas—including the thought that if it's money that got us into our current mess, it's money that can get us out of it.
