To say that John Law led a colourful life is an understatement. A gambler, financier and early economist, he advised the French on the reorganisation of their monetary system, but died a poor man after his involvement in what became known as the Mississippi Bubble. This biography by James Buchan looks at his life and career and is full of "Jacobite politics, elopements, prison breaks and court scandal", says James Kelly in The Scotsman. So "even a reader who might sigh at the thought of a book on the dismal science' will find much to savour".
Indeed, one of the flaws of the book is that the author "is curiously uninterested in the actual substance of Law's ideas on money and finance, and in the parallels between Law's experiment and the financial world of today", says Felix Martin in the FT. However, it remains a "masterly" biography. Law has "at last found a biographer who combines an expert understanding of finance, a profound knowledge of 18th-century history, and a novelist's gift for anecdote and pace". It "will take its place deservedly as the standard biography".
MoneyWeek
Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE
Sign up to Money Morning
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
There are times when the author's fondness for genealogy "leads him down sidetracks that serve at best to bewilder and at worst tobore", says Lucy Hughes-Hallett in the New Statesman, and the narrative sometimes "becomes tangled in a mass of extraneous anecdote". However, Buchan is "also capable of pithiness" and his wit is "delightful". Overall, this "erudite, elegantly written" book is like "a successful party" "full of interesting people, variously disgraceful or brilliant, and of compelling stories overlapped".
-
Millions at risk of 'unnecessary' tax bill – how to shield your savingsMillions of Brits could be taxed on their savings interest this year as their savings interest exceeds the personal savings allowance. Are you at risk?
-
Savers will have to wait as long as 48 years to build a £1m cash ISA pot if allowance is cutChancellor Rachel Reeves is rumoured to be planning a cut to the cash ISA allowance in the Autumn Budget, making it harder for savers to build wealth. Will you still be able to build a £1 million cash ISA pot?
