Money Changes Everything

Time-machine finance, as money historian William Goetzmann designs it, has given the United States the power to build its history. Despite financial disasters and investment crises, Goetzmann argues that the development of finance has enabled the growth of civilizations since ancient Mesopotamia. He demonstrates how time-machine finance influenced significant events in history—the birth of writing in ancient Mesopotamia, the rise and collapse of dynasties in imperial China, and the financing of trade voyages that brought Europeans to the New World.