Book description
In this groundbreaking biography, based on more than 10,000 hitherto
unavailable letters and diary entries, Niall Ferguson returns to his
roots as a financial historian to tell the story of the extraordinary
Siegmund Warburg.
A refugee from Hitler's Germany, Warburg rose to become the dominant
figure in the post-war City of London and one of the architects of
European financial integration. Seared by events in the 1930s, when
the long-established Warburg bank was first almost destroyed by the
Depression and then 'Aryanized' by the Nazis, Warburg was determined
that his own bank would learn from the past and contribute to the
economic recovery of Britain, the unity of Western Europe and the
birth of globalization.
Siegmund Warburg was a complex and ambivalent man, as much a
psychologist, politician and actor-manager as a banker. In High
Financier Niall Ferguson reveals Warburg's idiosyncracies but
above all he recaptures the meticulous business methods and strict
ethical code that set Warburg apart from the mere speculators and
traders who inhabit today's financial world.
Niall Ferguson
is one of Britain's most renowned historians and the author of a
sequence of bestselling books, the most recent being
The Ascent of Money
and
Civilization
.
