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Money
Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing | Jacob Goldstein
7 posts | 4 read | 6 to read
The co-host of the popular NPR podcast Planet Money provides a well-researched, entertaining, somewhat irreverent look at how money is a made-up thing that has evolved over time to suit humanity's changing needs. Money only works because we all agree to believe in it. In Money, Jacob Goldstein shows how money is a useful fiction that has shaped societies for thousands of years, from the rise of coins in ancient Greece to the first stock market in Amsterdam to the emergence of shadow banking in the 21st century. At the heart of the story are the fringe thinkers and world leaders who reimagined money. Kublai Khan, the Mongol emperor, created paper money backed by nothing, centuries before it appeared in the west. John Law, a professional gambler and convicted murderer, brought modern money to France (and destroyed the country's economy). The cypherpunks, a group of radical libertarian computer programmers, paved the way for bitcoin. One thing they all realized: what counts as money (and what doesn't) is the result of choices we make, and those choices have a profound effect on who gets more stuff and who gets less, who gets to take risks when times are good, and who gets screwed when things go bad. Lively, accessible, and full of interesting details (like the 43-pound copper coins that 17th-century Swedes carried strapped to their backs), Money is the story of the choices that gave us money as we know it today.
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Maria514626
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Beware the, “I‘ll read a few pages to see if I want to commit.” What did I expect from author who regularly appears on This American Life?
#auldlangspine @Sharpeipup

Sharpeipup I learned so much from this book. 2y
Maria514626 @sharpeipup He‘s such a good writer. He could write a book about worms and I‘d probably read it. 😆 2y
11 likes2 comments
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Sharpeipup
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Everyone should read this!
#blameitonlitsy

Megabooks Truth! 🙌🏻🙌🏻 2y
27 likes3 stack adds1 comment
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AvidReaderandGeekGirl
Pickpick

4 stars

Great narration and actually not boring!

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Megabooks
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Pickpick

I‘ve always been interested in the made-up things (government, religion) that grease the wheels of human society, so I was fascinated by this book. Goldstein writes about how the belief in money as an abstract concept (paper, online banking) has jump started change and innovation. He goes back to early China and the Mongol Empire before settling in and tracing the trajectory of money from Industrial Revolution England to today.

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Megabooks I loved his armchair quarterbacking/Captain Hindsight views on past financial calamities. Truly. I learned so much from this book! 3y
wanderinglynn I love Douglas Adam‘s quote about money in HHGTTG: “This planet has—or rather had—a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.” 3y
Megabooks @wanderinglynn wonderful quote and so true! 3y
See All 9 Comments
AmyG This sounds fascinating. 3y
Megabooks @AmyG it was! 3y
Cinfhen Love that @wanderinglynn 💚💚💚 3y
Cinfhen Great review, Meg! 3y
batsy Great review! I was thinking about the utter pointlessness of money & the destruction its wrought the other day because of some tweet involving bond repayments, roubles & dollars. And to think people are having to suffer or even die over it & how it's exchanged 😫 3y
Megabooks @batsy thanks! Yeah, money is definitely crazy. 3y
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shanaqui
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Pickpick

This was pretty much as I expected -- light and breezy, able to explain things like the gold standard and the issues for the euro that came from the Greek financial situation and Germany's particular focus on exports, but not something that I'd ever cite or trust to form my opinions.

Close to a #BookSpinBingo line now, though!

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shanaqui

Money/finance is not a particular interest of mine, but what I love is the range of non-fiction out there that lets me just dip into a topic. This book is proving not a bad way to do so: it's pretty chatty and simple, and makes things very easy to understand (e.g. the gold standard... and why it's a bad idea). It doesn't have footnotes directing you to specific sources, so I would treat it as very light and fluffy... but I'm enjoying it.

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Victoria6
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Book #68: Recently started listening to Planet Money so I thought I would check out this new book by one of the reporters!