'Beautifully written ... Breathtakingly clever' Sunday Telegraph

'A lucid and racy account of financial history' New Statesman

'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

'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