Your cart

Close

Total AUD

Checkout

Imprint

  • Abacus
  • Little, Brown Audio
  • Little, Brown

Fifty Things that Made the Modern Economy

Tim Harford

1 Reviews

Rated 0

Prose: non-fiction, Economics, Technology: general issues

FIFTY THINGS THAT SHAPES THE MODERN ECONOMY paints the epic picture of economic change in an intimate way, by telling the stories of tools and ideas that had far-reaching and unexpected consequences.

Based on the series produced for the BBC World Service

Who thought up paper money? How did the contraceptive pill change the face of the legal profession? Why was the horse collar as important for human progress as the steam engine? How did the humble spreadsheet turn the world of finance upside-down?

The world economy defies comprehension. A continuously-changing system of immense complexity, it offers over ten billion distinct products and services, doubles in size every fifteen years, and links almost every one of the planet's seven billion people. It delivers astonishing luxury to hundreds of millions. It also leaves hundreds of millions behind, puts tremendous strains on the ecosystem, and has an alarming habit of stalling. Nobody is in charge of it. Indeed, no individual understands more than a fraction of what's going on.
How can we make sense of this bewildering system on which our lives depend?

From the tally-stick to Bitcoin, the canal lock to the jumbo jet, each invention in Tim Harford's fascinating new book has its own curious, surprising and memorable story, a vignette against a grand backdrop. Step by step, readers will start to understand where we are, how we got here, and where we might be going next.

Hidden connections will be laid bare: how the barcode undermined family corner shops; why the gramophone widened inequality; how barbed wire shaped America. We'll meet the characters who developed some of these inventions, profited from them, or were ruined by them. We'll trace the economic principles that help to explain their transformative effects. And we'll ask what lessons we can learn to make wise use of future inventions, in a world where the pace of innovation will only accelerate.

Read More Read Less

Praise for Fifty Things that Made the Modern Economy

  • Short chapters are a delight in this frenetic age . . . Best of all, the book is constantly surprising. It brims with innovations I didn't know about, as well as ones I thought I knew about but did not - The Times

Read More Read Less

Tim Harford

Tim Harford is a senior columnist for the Financial Times and the presenter of Radio 4's More or Less. He was the winner of the Bastiat Prize for economic journalism in 2006, and More or Less was commended for excellence in journalism by the Royal Statistical Society in 2010, 2011 and 2012. Harford lives in Oxford with his wife and three children, and is a visiting fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. His other books include The Undercover Economist, The Logic of Life and Adapt.

This website uses cookies. Using this website means you are okay with this but you can find out more and learn how to manage your cookie choices here.Close cookie policy overlay