uses clear, simple language to guide the reader from the ancient precapitalist world to the origins of capitalism in medieval western Europe and its spread around the world. The last chapter discusses our current ongoing economic crisis. Topics include the preconditions and machinery of capitalism, European exploration, national finance, globalization, industrial revolution, stock exchanges, gold and paper money, the modern corporation, the impact of World War One, Communist economic history, the Great Depression, and the modern economic structure of the world. The reader will discover that the economic questions and problems of our time go back many centuries, and that solutions must take this into account.

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