Book Reviews

Double Entry: How the Merchants of Venice Created Modern Finance

304 pages, Paperback £8.99, Kindle £4.38 (Amazon) Back in the Thirteenth Century, when Venice ruled the waves, we can find the origins of modern capitalism. Back then the portents were vague, but the invention of bookkeeping and the introduction of Arabic numerals foreshadowed a revolution based on the stunningly original idea of being able to figure out whether or not your business was making a profit. Roll forward six hundred years and we find that those inventions, suitably adapted, have not just stood ...