What if everything we thought we knew about history was wrong? From the global bestselling author of Empire, The Ascent of Money and Civilization, this is a whole new way of looking at 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.
Those looking forward to a utopia of interconnected 'netizens' may therefore be disappointed. For networks are prone to clustering, contagions, and even outages. And the conflicts of the past
already have unnerving parallels today, in the time of Facebook, Islamic State and Trumpworld.
Reviews
'A great historian ... Ferguson is master of all he surveys' Spectator
'Ferguson's intellect and panache mean that his skillful revision of history will reverberate for years to come' Guardian
'A talented controversialist. He brings a wealth of historical knowledge to bear on big questions' Independent
'He writes with splendid panache and a seemingly effortless, debonair wit' Andrew Roberts
'Ferguson has knack for making long-ago events as vivid and visceral as the evening news' The New York Times
Author
Niall Ferguson is one of Britain's most renowned historians. He is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, a Senior Research Fellow of the Hoover Institution,
Stanford University, and a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
He is the author of Paper and Iron, The House of Rothschild, The Pity of War, The Cash Nexus, Empire, Colossus, The War of the World, The Ascent of Money, High Financier, Civilization and The
Great Degeneration. His Kissinger, a feature-length film based on his interviews with Henry Kissinger, won the 2011 New York Film Festival prize for best documentary.
His many other prizes and awards 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).
