Money for Nothing: The Scientists, Fraudsters, and Corrupt Politicians Who Reinvented Money, Panicked a Nation, and Made the World Rich

The sweeping story of the world’s first financial crisis: “an astounding episode from the early days of financial markets that to this day continues to intrigue and perplex historians .

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narrative history at its best, lively and fresh with new insights” (Liaquat Ahamed, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Lords of Finance) A Financial Times Economics Book of the Year ● Longlisted for the Financial Times/ McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award In the heart of the Scientific Revolution, when new theories promised to explain the affairs of the universe, Britain was broke, facing a mountain of debt accumulated in war after war it could not afford.

But that same Scientific Revolution—the kind of thinking that helped Isaac Newton solve the mysteries of the cosmos—would soon lead clever, if not always scrupulous, men to try to figure a way out of Britain’s financial troubles.