Books by William N. Goetzmann

The author is William N. Goetzmann, and the subtitle is How Finance Made Civilization Possible .  This is a very good general history about the useful role finance has played through the ages.

1. The Great Mirror of Folly: Finance, Culture, and the Crash of 1720 , edited by William N. Goetzmann, Catherine Labio, K. Geert Rouwenhorst, and Timothy G. Young, with a foreword by Robert J. Shiller.  A beautiful full-size book with amazing plates as well as text.  Think of this as a book about a book, focusing on a Dutch publication around the time of the bubble called The Great Mirror of Folly , “a unique and splendid record of the financial crisis and its cultural dimensions.”  Recommended...