Millionaire: The Philanderer, Gambler and Duelist Who Invented Modern Finance

Three centuries ago, in an age when one man's vision & energy could change the world, John Law's would spark the first "boom & bust." A Scot of striking appearance & magnetic personality, Law had an uncommon mathematical gift which he parlayed into a fortune from gambling. Escaping prison after killing a man in a duel, he arrived in Paris & turned his attention to finance. His idea was simple: if money were lent in the form of paper properly backed by assets, rather than in the traditional form of gold & silver coin, then the same money could be lent many times over. Law won royal backing to set up the first French bank to issue paper currency & established the most powerful conglomerate the world had ever seen. So successful were Law's experiments that a new word was coined to describe the shareholders in his company: millionaire. What followed was epic drama: fortunes were made & lost, paupers grew rich, & lords fell to poverty. When the chaos finally abated, the man once feted throughout Europe & elevated to celebrity status in the world's most powerful nation had become an outcast. With all the drama of The Professor & the Madman, The Man Who Invented Money is a fascinating narrative about a crucial event in world financial history that holds uncanny relevance in our credit-based, investment-mad times.Gleeson, Janet is the author of 'Millionaire: The Philanderer, Gambler and Duelist Who Invented Modern Finance' with ISBN 9780684872957 and ISBN 0684872951.