“Money is a matter of functions four: a medium, a measure, a standard, a store.” But money is always a medium of communication too, whether about price or about political conviction and authority, fealty, desire, or disdain. In a work that spans 4,500 years, 54 experts chart across six volumes how money has made 'the world go round' and capture money's complexities in both substance and form. Individual volume editors ensure the cohesion of the whole and, to make it as easy as possible to use, chapter titles are identical across each of the volumes. This gives the choice of reading about a specific period in one of the volumes, or following a theme across history by reading the relevant chapter in each of the six. The six volumes cover: 1 - Antiquity (2500 BCE-500 CE); 2 - Medieval Age (500-1400); 3 - Renaissance (1400-1680); 4 - Age of Enlightenment (1680-1820); 5 - Age of Empire (1820-1920); 6 - Modern Age (1920-present). Themes (and chapter titles) are: Money and its Technologies;
