Details
Synopsis
In this history of humans' fascination with gold, the author discusses the ways in which the prized element has inspired artists to create, motivated political leaders to conquer foreign nations, and encouraged explorers to embark on dangerous expeditions. He also describes gold's physical properties, offering reasons why people all over the globe prefer gold to any other precious metal.
| Size | | Length: | 432 pages | | Height: | 10.3 in | | Width: | 6.3 in | | Thickness: | 2.2 in | | Weight: | 27.2 oz |
Publisher's Notes
First Line: "About one hundred years ago, John Ruskin told the story of a man who boarded a ship carrying his entire wealth in a large bag of gold coins."
Industry Reviews
"Over all, [Bernstein] provides a smooth, even entertaining rendering of the rise of gold from ornamental curiosity to its more potent incarnations--first as a store of wealth and symbol of power, then as money and finally as supreme arbiter and sovereign over even the most vaunted national economies. He's a good storyteller, practiced in the use of character and plot and conflict. That's a talent, not epidemic among economic historians, that he puts to rewarding purpose: for example, in an artful description of the baleful effects of blind adherence to the gold standard in Europe following World War I."
Abelson
"The first half of THE POWER OF GOLD contains some mistakes of fact, interpretation and emphasis, and some errors in Latin and Greek and Western and Oriental numismatics. Like Keynes's and many other economists' , Bernstein's is a modern mind which appears a little lost in remote ages and locations, and sometimes seems reluctant to admit them to the realm of fact. It is only with the invention of political economy in the 18th century and the widespread adoption of a gold standard in the 19th that he becomes comfortable with his material and his book gets interesting. It also has fewer mistakes."
London Review of Books - James Buchan (11/16/2000)
<B>It Certainly Glitters, but What Is It Worth?</B>
<BR>PETER L. BERNSTEIN would be a wonderful dinner partner. He has an immense base of knowledge, from which he combs one good story after another. His tales are all rich with interesting characters and charmingly told. Though he has clearly done the scholarly reading, he would never bore you with minutiae. At the end of such an evening, you would understand that his stories all served his theme. <BR> Such it is with Mr. Bernstein's most recent book, "<I>The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession</I>". This interesting and pleasurable work tracks the world's passion for gold from ancient Egypt to the present. <BR> Mr. Bernstein is a Wall Street consultant with 60 years of experience in finance. He enjoys a reputation for explaining complex financial topics to a broad audience in an engaging way. He has written about the intellectual foundations of the capital markets and about probability theory in managing risk. <BR> This history is about the use and misuse of gold for money or - in the modern era - as backing for money, the arrangement known as the gold standard. Nations relied on gold to stabilize the value of paper money by standing ready to buy or sell gold at a set price. For a long time in the United States, that price was $35 an ounce. The gold standard is history now, as ancient as the Vietnam War: in 1971, President Richard M. Nixon "closed the gold window," ending the right of foreign central banks to demand gold for dollars. Gold and the dollar are now worth whatever the financial markets say they are. <BR> Though Mr. Bernstein is discerning and evenhanded in his writing, he shows his colors immediately. He begins with a story told a century ago by John Ruskin: A ship passenger has a big bag of gold coins. Later, when ordered to abandon ship, he straps the gold around his waist, leaps over the side, plunges to the ocean bottom and perishes. So, Ruskin asks, did he have the gold, or did the gold have him? <BR> The pleasure of the book is in its sheer number of unknown places and interesting episodes. Mr. Bernstein introduces us to Off a, king of Mercia, who originated the first widely accepted money in Britain around the year 800. He retained three master moneyers, Eoba, Babba and Udd, to mint silver pennies by the millions, Cornwall being rich in silver. Offa's coin was in circulation for 500 years. <BR> The Chinese invented paper money. Marco Polo marveled at Kublai Khan's currency, "as formal and authoritative as if it were made of pure gold and silver." The Great Khan had ordered every payment, anywhere in his domain, to be made in his currency. "And," Marco Polo observed, "no one dares refuse it, on pain of losing his life." Pretty good backing for a currency. Further, the Khan had ordered that treasure brought into his empire be turned over to him in exchange for paper money. <BR> Real treasure for mere paper - was that unfair? How different was the Khan's fiat, Mr. Bernstein asks, from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's action in 1933, barring private parties from owning gold and ordering gold turned in for dollars? <BR> There are sugarplums throughout the book. They might be a dazzling piece of prose by John Maynard Keynes, or a description of the logistics of the huge Spanish treasure convoys, or an aside on the relative economic advantages of camel caravans and ships in the gold trade between the Mediterranean and West Africa in the 15th century. Mr. Bernstein explains why, after centuries of coexistence, gold shoved aside silver as the universal standard. (Silver was swamped by a deluge of gold discoveries in the 19th century.) <BR> Mr. Bernstein suggests that a gold standard is a bane in bad times, an irrelevance in good. In hard times, protecting the gold stock requires high interest rates and austerity measures, deepening the downturn. In good times, a Strong economy itself supports the currency. <BR> Between the American Civil War and World ...
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