Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot: Call it what you like, it matters. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it's the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, it's the chains of labour. But in The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. With the clarity and verve for which he is famed, Niall Ferguson explains reveals financial history as the essential back-story behind all history. He explains why the origins of the French Revolution lie in a stock market bubble caused by a convicted Scots murderer. He shows how financial failure turned Argentina from the world's sixth richest country into an inflation-ridden basket-case - and how a financial revolution is propelling the world's most populous country from poverty to power. Yet the most important lesson of the financial history is that sooner or later every bubble bursts. And that's why, whether you're scraping by or rolling in it, there's never been a better time to understand the ascent of money.