The New York Times says:

“Learned, lively and often irreverent, David McWilliams’s “The History of Money” is rich with surprising details about currency, then and now”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/09/books/review/the-history-of-money-david-mcwilliams.html?unlocked_article_code=1.z08.PvWR.Q3NCSlCpu46u&smid=url-share

New York Post:

https://nypost.com/2025/11/10/world-news/from-the-worlds-first-ever-bailout-by-the-romans-to-33-interest-loans-5000-years-ago-humans-have-pretty-much-always-been-in-financial-crisis/?utm_campaign=iphone_nyp&utm_source=mail_app

And in a starred review Kirkus has called The History Of Money: A Story Of Humanity  “an absolute romp through history, with money—its uses and misuses—as the throughline”

How money has made the world.

Religion, technology, power, and the rise and fall of entire empires are tied up with economics and commerce in McWilliams’ excellent whistle-stop tour of the way money has shaped world history. Covering centuries of innovations—from an ancient baboon femur called the Ishango Bone, possibly used for accounting, to digital-age solutions like M-Pesa, a service in Africa that turns mobile-phone credit into money—it’s a blast of a book. A former Central Bank of Ireland economist who says his peers in the field “take the fun out of money,” McWilliams is a clever and irreverent guide with a knack for turning economic concepts into easy conversation. “For economists, price is only a number,” he writes; “for real people, price is a feeling.“ He takes shots at the way the elite turn up their noses at discussing money matters. “No one pretends to dislike money more than the truly posh,” he says. “Beneath the snobbery is fear,” he adds, “fear of usurpation” thanks to money’s “ability to propel social advancement.” McWilliams is skeptical of crypto, calling it “more or less an elaborate scam” that has preyed on anemic public trust in institutions. A “few tech-savvy bros issuing tokens and calling these coupons ‘currency,’” he says, “is not the future of money.” This isn’t surprising. Here is an author who is fascinated by his subject, who holds it in esteem and sees it as second to only fire as “the crucial technology” shaping humanity for the past 5,000 years. Money emerges in the book as something almost miraculous: the connective tissue between cultures, the oxygen for innovation. It’s “a kind of magic,” McWilliams says, “motivating people to strive, to innovate, and ultimately to change their own personal circumstances and thereby change the world.” Early in the book he claims: “Money was the first thing we wrote about.” In McWilliams’ hands, it’s wonderful to read about.

An absolute romp through history, with money—its uses and misuses—as the throughline.

Praise for The History Of Money: A Story Of Humanity

"Money has found its greatest biographer. The subject of this book has spent most of its life on the run from being well understood. At least until now. In this swashbuckling epic of grand sweeps and tight close ups, David McWilliams brilliantly excavates the history of money, which is our history too. Evolution and revolution. He is a master storyteller of rare talent."
Bono

“Most economists do not really understand money… They take the fun out of it.’ Thus begins Irish economist David McWilliams’s rollicking ride through the pecuniary past. From the 20,000-year-old Ishango Bone (the first known accounting instrument) to today’s M-Pesa (Kenya’s mobile phone payments system), the reader is whisked at the speed of a Weimar printing press through the history of financial evolution. If Flann O’Brien and Milton Friedman had ever collaborated, this might have been the result. I was entertained. But I also learned.”
Niall Ferguson, author of The Ascent of Money

"It’s a crime, it can’t buy me love, it’s the root of all evil, it makes the world go around, it’s what I want. Money has long been the subject of song and sayings. And now, at last, we have The History of Money: a clear and endlessly fascinating explanation of what this is all about and how it all works."
Steven Pinker, Harvard University, author of When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows…

"A cracking book that is as enjoyable as it is readable."
Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads

“If, as David McWilliams complains, economists take the fun out of money, then he is the exception that proves the rule: a man who could not write a boring sentence if he tried, and who, in this brilliantly informative and entertaining book, has done his subject splendid justice."
Tom Holland, author of Dominion

“A breathtaking, expansive and imaginative ride through the history and future of Money from an author who truly understands it. If, like me, you’ve never quite figured out where money comes from or even what it is, this is the book for you”

Professor Brian Cox

“Equally entertaining and insightful”

Yanis Varoufakis