New Releases by Niall Ferguson

Few economic events have had a more profound or enduring impact than the German hyperinflation of 1923, still remembered popularly as a root cause of Hitler''s rise to power. Yet many historians have argued that inflationary policies were, on balance, advantageous to post-1918 Germany, both boosting growth and helping to reduce reparations. The scholarly consensus is that there was no viable alternative to inflation. In Paper and Iron Niall Ferguson takes a different view. He argues that inflation was indeed an economic and political disaster, and further that there were alternative economic policies which could have stabilised the German currency in 1920. To explain why these were not adopted he points to long-term defects in the political institutions of the Reich which went back as far as the 1890s and which persisted beyond 1918. The book therefore reveals the Wilhelmine origins of Weimar''s failure, as well as casting light on the origins of the Third Reich.

Following the international success of his iconoclastic The Pity of War, Niall Ferguson now takes on the history of money -the sinews of war - and power.

La idea de que el dinero hace girar el mundo es una nocion seductora. El cambio economico parece haber sido el primer motor del cambio politico, tanto en la era de la industria como en la de Internet. Niall Ferguson desafia este supuesto al ofrecer una historia radicalmente nueva sobre el nexo entre el dinero y el poder. A lo largo de la historia moderna b"sostiene el autor- han sido tanto las finanzas como las armas las que han decidido los destinos de las naciones en la gran prueba de la guerra. Todavia hoy nuestras vidas estan dominadas por instituciones originadas en tiempos de guerra: el impuesto sobre la renta, los parlamentos, las deudas nacionales, los bancos centrales e incluso las bolsas. El poder politico puede estar mas vinculado a la financiacion de las campanas que a la prosperidad del periodo pre-electoral; pero deberiamos invertir mas, y no menos, en le proceso democratico. La globalizacion financiera sin una autoridad imperial definida puede ser demasiado inestable; en comparacion con las superpotencias del pasado, Estado Unidos esta negandose a asumir sus responsabilidades internacionales. Las burbujas y las crisis financieras pueden ser presagios de una crisis mas profunda que podria detener el avance de la democracia y el capitalismo. Esta obra constituye una sintesis audaz de la historia politica y de la teoria economica moderna que presenta conclusiones desafiantes e inquietantes sobre el futuro del capitalismo y de la democracia.

In this landmark work of history, Ferguson vividly brings back to life this terrifying period and makes a simple and provocative argument: that the human atrocity known as the Great War was entirely England''s fault. 34 illustrations.

Presents a portrait of Europe''s most powerful banking family, tracing their influence on European finance, on political events, and on European Jewry

1st complete history of the Rothschild banking dynasty with full access to worldwide archives. Ever since the Rothschild''s spectacular rise to preeminence in European finance during the last, turbulent years of the Napoleonicwars, a mythology has grown up around the family and it''s firms. It is no exaggeration to say that the Rothschilds became 1 of theliving legends of the 19th century: the personfication of a new era in which money determined status and power, an era in which 5 Jewish brothers born into the wretchedness of the Frnakfurt Ghetto could rise by their own ingenuity to become '' the worlds bankers'' - dominating the international financial markets, rubbing shoulders with the social elite, patronising the great artists and architects of the era and above all exerting a decisive, if veiled, influence over the world''s monarchs and statesmen. Using a wealth of archival sources as well as a vast amount of little known contemporary and more recent secondary literature, Niall Ferguson''s definitive study will finally hold the mirror of reality up to the face of myth. The result promises not only to do justice to the history of Rothschilds, but to revolutionise the history of the years of their rise and preeminence, and to reveal fascinating continuities from the 19th century to our own time.