Lords of Finance
  • Published: 19 March 2020
  • ISBN: 9781847943002
  • Imprint: Random House Business
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 576
  • RRP: $24.99
Categories:

Lords of Finance

1929, The Great Depression, and the Bankers who Broke the World

Formats & editions
EBook
30 Sep 2011
Paperback
19 Mar 2020
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Samuel Johnson shortlisted & FT/Goldman Sachs WINNER: a vivid, dramatic account of the four men whose personal and professional actions led to the world economic collapse of the late 1920s.

THIS HAS HAPPENED BEFORE.

The current financial crisis has only one parallel: the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and subsequent Great Depression of the 1930s, which crippled the future of an entire generation and set the stage for the horrors of the Second World War. Yet the economic meltdown could have been avoided, had it not been for the decisions taken by a small number of central bankers.

In Lords of Finance, we meet these men, the four bankers who truly broke the world: the enigmatic Norman Montaguof the bank of England, Benjamin Strong of the NY Federal Reserve, the arrogant yet brilliant Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbanlk and the xenophobic Emile Moreau of the Banque de France. Their names were lost to history, their lives and actions forgotten, until now. Liaquat Ahamed tells their story in vivid and gripping detail, in a timely and arresting reminder that individuals - their ambitions, limitations and human nature - lie at the very heart of global catastrophe.
  • Published: 19 March 2020
  • ISBN: 9781847943002
  • Imprint: Random House Business
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 576
  • RRP: $24.99
Categories:

About the author

Liaquat Ahamed

Liaquat Ahamed has been a professional investment manager for twenty-five years. He has worked at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., and the New York-based partnership of Fischer Francis Trees and Watts, where he served as chief executive. He is currently an adviser to several hedge fund groups, including the Rock Creek Group and the Rohatyn Group, is a director of Aspen Insurance Co., and is on the board of trustees of the Brookings Institution. He has degrees in economics from Harvard and Cambridge universities. Lords of Finance, which was shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction and which won the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award, the Spear’s Financial History Book of the Year Award, and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for History, is Liaquat Ahamed’s first book.

Praise for Lords of Finance

Absorbing [and] provocative, not least because it is still relevant.

The Economist

A great read.

George Soros

'Highly readable... [Ahamed] cannot have foreseen how timely his book would be.

Niall Ferguson

'Superlative... a subject of real fascination... Lords of Finance has the flair and wisdom to find a wide readership on the strength of its main ideas.'

New York Times

'Fascinating... a brisk, original, incisive and entertaining account of a crucial time in the world's economic history that continues to affect us all today. Anyone who wants to understand the origins of the economic world we live in would do well to read this book'

Michael Beschloss

One of those rare books - authoritative, readable and relevant - that puts the "story" back into history... a spellbinding, richly human [and] cinematic narrative.

Strobe Talbott
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