In The Reckoning, award-winning historian Jacob Soll shows how the use and misuse of financial bookkeeping has determined the fates of entire societies. Time and again, Soll reveals, good and honest accounting has been a tool to build successful companies, states and empires. Yet when it is neglected or falls into the wrong hands, accounting has contributed to cycles of destruction that continue to this day. Combining rigorous scholarship and fresh storytelling, The Reckoning

A “brilliant” (Los Angeles Review of Books) history of accounting, showing how financial and political accountability has shaped the rise and fall of nations and empiresWhether building a road or fighting a war, leaders from ancient Mesopotamia to the present have relied on financial accounting to track their state's assets and guide its policies. Basic accounting tools such as auditing and double-entry bookkeeping form the basis of modern capitalism and the nation-state. Yet our a...

From a MacArthur “Genius,” an intellectual history of the free market, from ancient Rome to the twenty-first centuryAfter two government bailouts of the US economy in less than twenty years, free market ideology is due for serious reappraisal. In Free Market, Jacob Soll details how we got to this current crisis, and how we can find our way out by looking to earlier iterations of free market thought. Contrary to popular narratives, early market theorists be...

"Colbert has long been celebrated as Louis XIV's minister of finance, trade, and industry. More recently, he has been viewed as his minister of culture and propaganda. In this lively and persuasive book, Jake Soll has given us a third Colbert, the information manager."---Peter Burke, University of Cambridge"Jacob Soll gives us a road map drawn from the French state under Colbert. With a stunning attention to detail Colbert used knowledge in the service of enhancingroy...

As new ideas arose during the Enlightenment, many political thinkers published their own versions of popular early modern "absolutist" texts and transformed them into manuals of political resistance. As a result, these works never achieved a fixed and stable edition. Publishing The Prince illustrates how Abraham-Nicolas Amelot de La Houssaye created the most popular late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century version of Machiavelli's masterpiece. In the process of translating, Amelot...

｜國之興亡，必有經濟｜自由市場何以變成恐怖情人？以為它能許我們財富，迎來的卻是週期性的市場失靈。如今主張放寬國際市場干預的是習近平，捍衛保護主義的成了美國。邁入經濟發展的新世紀，正是時候重新認識自由市場。◎我們可學到許多與當前政策辯論相關的知識。無論你是喜愛或討厭自由市場，都可從這本書獲益匪淺。──洛倫斯．H．薩默斯，前美國財政部長、哈佛大學第27任校長◎雅各．索爾引人入勝且開創性的研究是一場歷史的壯麗之旅，也是對塑造世界主要經濟思想的精彩探索。──戈登．布朗，前英國首相｜把自由與干預的市場演變寫成一部引人入勝的歷史故事｜◆ 亞當斯密的《國富論》被錯誤理解，他主張政府的手在市場中扮演重要角色？◆ 西塞羅鼓吹建立依循道德運作的市場，卻諷刺地在羅馬的權力交易中被出賣？◆ 史上首次股票上市的荷蘭東印度公司，為何能讓民眾相信紙張即代表公司所有權？...

From a MacArthur “Genius,” an intellectual history of the free market, from ancient Rome to the twenty-first centuryAfter two government bailouts of the US economy in less than twenty years, free market ideology is due for serious reappraisal. In Free Market, Jacob Soll details how we got to this current crisis, and how we can find our way out by looking to earlier iterations of free market thought. Contrary to popular narratives, early market theorists believed that states had an ...

**梅迪奇家族的沒落、****西班牙帝國的性起、**法國大革命的爆發……這本書會讓你相信──會計師才是推動歷史的人周建宏│資誠聯合會計師事務所執行長馬秀如│政治大學會計學系教授郭政弘│勤業眾信聯合會計師事務所總裁劉順仁│台灣大學會計學系暨研究所教授劉瑞華│清華大學經濟學系教授————好評推薦————《大查帳》是一部引人入勝的會計簡史，引領讀者從遠古的會計作業出發，經過十三世紀複式分錄簿記法的曖昧起源，到文藝復興時期的義大利、西班牙王國與路易十四統治下的法國，再到荷蘭共和國、不列顛王國和早期的美國。過程中，作者以一位...

As individuals, we depend on the services that governments provide. Collectively, we look to them to tackle the big problems - from long-term climate and demographic change to short-term crises like pandemics or war. Funding this activity, and managing the required finances sustainably, is difficult – and getting more so.But governments don't provide – or use – basic financial information that every business is required to maintain. They ignore the value of public assets and most l...

Ein merkwürdiger Brief erreicht den Meisterdetektiv. In großen Lettern steht darin geschrieben: HOLMES WIRD STERBEN - HOLMES MUSS STERBEN - HOLMES SOLL STERBEN! Wer trachtet Sherlock Holmes nach dem Leben? Hängt es mit einem alten Fall zusammen? Noch bevor der Meisterdetektiv Ermittlungen anstellen kann, wird bereits der erste Anschlag auf sein Leben verübt. Und Holmes muss erkennen, dass er es mit einem äußerst gefährlichen Gegner zu tun hat.

Although there is a rich historiography on Enlightenment Tuscany in Italian as well as French and German, the principle Anglophone works are Eric Cochrane’s Tradition and Enlightenment in the Tuscan Academies (1961) and his Enlightenment Florence in the Forgotten Centuries (1973). It is high time to revisit the Tuscan Enlightenment. This volume brings together an international group of scholars with the goal of putting to rest the idea that Florence ceased to be interesti...