Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot. Call if what you like, it matters now more than ever. In The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that financial history is the back-story to all history.

From the banking dynasty who funded the Italian Renaissance to the stock market bubble that caused the French Revolution, this is the story of booms and busts as it's never been told before.

With the world in the grip of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, there's never been a better time to understand the ascent - and descent - of money.

'Beautifully written . . . Breathtakingly clever.' Martin Vander Weyer, Sunday Telegraph

'A fine, readable and entertaining history.' Dominic Sandbrook, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year

'The tales he tells of boom and bust, of triumph and disaster, of bubbles that inflate . . . are the very essence of financial history.' Bill Emmott, Financial Times

'A lucid and racy account of financial history.' Peter Wilby, New Statesman

'An often enlightening and enjoyable tour through the underside of great events, a lesson in how the most successful great powers have always been underpinned by smart money.' Robert Skidelsky, New York Review of Books