Table of Contents

Part 1 Spending and taxing: the rise and fall of the warfare state; "hateful taxes"; the Commons and the castle -representation and administration. Part 2 Promises to pay: mountains of the moon - public debts; the money printers - default and debasement; of interest. Part 3 Economic politics: dead weights and tax-eaters - the social history of finance; the myth of the feelgood factor; the Silverbridge syndrome - electoral economics. Part 4 Global power: masters and plankton - financial globalization; golden fetters, paper chains - international monetary regimes; the American wave - democracy's flow and ebb; fractured unities; understretch - the limits of economic power; conclusion.

About the Author

Niall Ferguson is one of Britain's most renowned historians. He is a Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, a Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford University, and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. The bestselling author of Paper and Iron, The House of Rothschild, The Pity of War, The Cash Nexus, Empire and Colossus, he also writes regularly for newspapers and magazines all over the world. Since 2003 he has written and presented three highly successful television documentary series for Channel Four- Empire, American Colossus and, most recently, The War of the World. He, his wife and three children divide their time between the United Kingdom and the United States.