В 1970-м в Ирландии работа банков замерла на полгода, и общество оказалось на грани обожаемого историками экономики мифического мира «доденежного бартера». Но коллапса не случилось. Во-первых, потому что бартер в цивилизованных обществах — это действительно миф, во-вторых, у ирландцев есть пабы. И пабы замечательным образом многое решили. Богатая неизбитыми примерами «Неофициальная биография денег» рассказывает не о слитках или монетах, а об идеях, практиках и государственных институтах. Читать о том, как банки стали главнее королей, а модные экономисты водили за нос правительства разных эпох, не менее увлекательно, чем о пиастрах и луидорах. Знакомство же с «матерью» всех черных дней недели, «черной пятницей 1866 года», и ее потомками вплоть до нынешнего глобального экономического кризиса демонстрирует, что наступаем мы, в общем-то, на одни и те же грабли, а до бедственного положения нас доводят ошибочно понимаемая природа денег и дурно организованная деятельность банков.

I found the book to be readable, but wordy in its explanation. At times it was dry, but what off-setted that was the practical ideas about money from its history and its modern applications. If there were more set points to remember instead of the wordy banter I would have liked the book more. ( )

Another confused book. Seems to think everyone else is confused, and there's more than a hint of arrogance about it. Foolish others, e tells us, think that "money" equals "coinage", but Martin knows it's not coinage but a "social technology" (which seems to mean a way of tracking and settling debts). But i remember the concepts of M1, M2, M3 in my basic Economics course at Oxford; these clearly distinguished cash in circulation as just one element in the money supply. Very much against the idea that money developed out of barter (the standard view from Aristotle, Adam Smith and all, but he doesn't explain the role of wives, cows, camels, in pre-coinage economies. But he dates the beginning of money to the beginning of coinage in Ancient Greece and that this also required an intellectual understanding by philosophers of what money really is. he darts around all over the history books, with some illuminating details, e.g. the use of sticks for tallying tax payments in medieval England which led to the word "stocks" and also to the burning of Westminster Palace - as painted by Turner. Exposition of Bagehot as an observer of the real world, rather than an economic theorist is also good,

I get the feeling that his examples are a bit random and his protesting a bit too much. Nonetheless, Economics does have a case to answer. It seemed a pretty thin explanation of the world when i studied it, and subsequent events have done little to change that view. Nor does this book have the answer. ( )