The Square and the Tower: Networks, Hierarchies and the Struggle for Global Power - Softcover

Ferguson, Niall

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241298989 ISBN 13: 9780241298985

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2017

Synopsis

'The most brilliant British historian of his generation' The Times

What if everything we thought we knew about history was wrong? From Niall Ferguson, the global bestselling author of Empire, The Ascent of Money and Civilization, this is a whole new way of imagining the world.

Most history is hierarchical: it's about popes, presidents, and prime ministers. But what if that's simply because they create the historical archives? What if we are missing equally powerful but less visible networks - leaving them to the conspiracy theorists, with their dreams of all-powerful Illuminati?

The twenty-first century has been hailed as the Networked Age. But in The Square and the Tower Niall Ferguson argues that social networks are nothing new. From the printers and preachers who made the Reformation to the freemasons who led the American Revolution, it was the networkers who disrupted the old order of popes and kings. Far from being novel, our era is the Second Networked Age, with the computer in the role of the printing press. Once we understand this, both the past, and the future, start to look very different indeed.

About this title

Review

Silicon Valley needed a history lesson and Ferguson has provided it (Eric Schmidt)

Niall Ferguson writes big, muscular books with high-concept ideas that target current concerns through the prism of the past. They are pull-yourself-together warnings to the present by way of arresting historical precedent... Ferguson's breadth of learning is impressive (Andrew Anthony Guardian)

This is an immensely stimulating historical tour d'horizon...an absorbing Cook's tour of the past combined with an illuminating polemic about the current digital revolution. (David Goodhart Standpoint)

About the Author

Niall Ferguson is one of Britain's most renowned historians. He is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a senior fellow of the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, and a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing. His books include The House of Rothschild, Empire, The War of the World, The Ascent of Money, The Great Degeneration and Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist. His many prizes include the Benjamin Franklin Prize for Public Service (2010), the Hayek Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2012) and the Ludwig Erhard Prize for Economic Journalism (2013).

About this edition

• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0241298989
• ISBN 13: 9780241298985
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 608