Economics & Finance

This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly

The acclaimed New York Times bestselling history of financial crises

Paperback

Price:
$22.95/£18.99
ISBN:
Published:
Aug 7, 2011
2009
Pages:
512
Size:
5.5 x 8.5 in.
Illus:
62 line illus. 30 tables.
Main_subject:
Economics & Finance
Buy This

Throughout history, rich and poor countries alike have been lending, borrowing, crashing, and recovering their way through an extraordinary range of financial crises. Each time, the experts have chimed, “this time is different”—claiming that the old rules of valuation no longer apply and that the new situation bears little similarity to past disasters. With this breakthrough study, leading economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff definitively prove them wrong.

Covering sixty-six countries across five continents and eight centuries, This Time Is Different presents a comprehensive look at the varieties of financial crises—including government defaults, banking panics, and inflationary spikes—from medieval currency debasements to the subprime mortgage catastrophe. Reinhart and Rogoff provocatively argue that financial combustions are universal rites of passage for emerging and established market nations.

A remarkable history of financial folly, This Time Is Different will influence financial and economic thinking and policy for decades to come.


Awards and Recognition

  • Winner of the 2011 Gold Medal Arthur Ross Book Award, Council on Foreign Relations
  • Winner of the 2010 Paul A. Samuelson Award, TIAA-CREF
  • One of USA Today's "Year's Best Business Books To Make Sense of Financial Crisis"
  • Listed on Bloomberg.com by James Pressley as one of "our favorite financial-crisis books this year"
  • Shortlisted for the 2010 Spear's Book of the Year Award in Financial History
  • Finalist for the 2011 Estoril Global Issues Distinguished Book Prize
  • Runner-Up for the Book of the Year, The Atlantic
  • Finalist for the 2009 Business Book Award ("Best of the Rest") in Current Interest, 800-CEO-READ
  • Kenneth Rogoff, Recipient of the 2011 Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics, Center for Financial Studies
  • One of Library Journal Best Business Books - Economics/U.S. Economy category