GOLD - How It Shaped History

Alan Ereira tells the whole story – or more of it than any previous historian has attempted – from the earliest victims of its attractions and the triumph of gold in the world´s monetary systems to the ultimate paradox: that the surrender of gold´s hegemony to fictive forms of money has made it more longed-for than ever. Throughout, the wisdom of the Kogi guides him towards an objective, critical and devastatingly clear view of gold as the veins of the planet, better left in the rivers and the soil than extracted to the impoverishment of the Earth, the pollution of the environment and the mockery of economists. To read the book is a pleasure as well an obligation. Alan Ereira has a film-maker´s eye for vivid evidence, a screenwriter´s gift for rhythm and pace, a scholar´s curiosity to know the truth and an intellectual´s determination to understand it. He threads news, current concerns, artistic and literary allusions and his own impressive relevant experience deftly into the narration. Startling comparisons, unfamiliar facts, curious images and engrossing experiences abound. It´s a book about which everyone can argue, but nobody ignore. 

FELIPE FERNÁNDEZ-ARMESTO, author of The Oxford Illustrated History of the World

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