A Fabulous Debt
The Epic Story of How Bonds Built the Modern World
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected 24 Sept 2026
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- 14,99 €
Publisher Description
"A COMPELLING HISTORY OF A POWERFUL IDEA" - Jacob Goldstein, author of Money
From veteran Financial Times journalist Robin Wigglesworth, an epic history of the debt that built the modern world.
Long considered the "boring" corner of finance, bonds are anything but. They are bigger than the stock market and rival even the global banking system in influence. But they are also misunderstood – treated as mere debt, when in fact their impact is radically different.
From medieval Venice to modern Wall Street, Robin Wigglesworth uncovers the sweeping, unveiling story of the bond market. With clarity and wit, this is a people’s history of finance: rich in drama, full of colourful characters, and bursting with insights.
Bonds have funded everything from the Crusades to climate tech, Netflix series to AI data centres. Pooling capital from citizens and merchants at an unmatched scale, they have been the hidden force behind some of humanity’s highest achievements and greatest calamities. This isn’t just a book about the past. It’s a guide to the future of finance, and a love letter to the engine that keeps it running.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"The bond market is the world's largest, most sophisticated, most powerful machine," writes Financial Times journalist Wigglesworth (Trillions) in this illuminating history. Noting that the global bond market is approximately $174 trillion, he traces its origin to 12th-century Venice, where, after suffering raids by the Byzantines, leaders extracted an involuntary loan from citizens to finance a fleet of 120 warships. Modern bond-rating agencies like Moody's can be traced back to credit-reporting agencies like that of abolitionist Lewis Tappan, who in the mid-1800s employed 2,000 part-time correspondents to rank the reliability and solvency of U.S. businesses. Among the reporters were four future U.S. presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, who would later use government bonds to finance the Union's Civil War efforts. To help fund WWI, actor Charlie Chaplin promoted Liberty bonds, even making a film titled The Bond, which proclaimed the Liberty bond was more important than the bonds of friendship, love, and matrimony. Wigglesworth concludes with a trip to the Netherlands to celebrate the 400th birthday of the world's oldest "living" bond, which was issued to finance the rebuild of a dike smashed by drifting ice. The author's accessible distillation of data and Dickensian eye for memorable events and characters make this a must-read for anyone interested in global finance.
