Capitals of Capital: A History of International Financial Centres, 1780-2005

The author is without thesis, which is fine for a history book, of course, but the narrative of the book supposes a lot of things. I like my financial history books to have a decent amount of charts and graphs, to allow me to interpret some of the data for myself and tease out questions that I may seek answers for myself and formulate my own hypothesis; instead we are spoon feed the writer's weak and vague suppositions and tangents that generic at best. One major problem I have with this book is the way aggregate data is little provided instead he replaces such critical information with "who's who" of I-banking. This book just proves to me again that financial historians should keep a good copy of their C.P. Kindleberger handy. Finally, in his last chapter he claims boastfully that New York City is the financial capital of the world, but if has been conscious of the industry he would know that London has regained the title several years ago. But part of this discrepancy may be the fact that the stats the author uses stops at the year 2004, right about the time London regained its titled. This would be good for your library f you could pick up a copy for under $12 because neither is it critical but, its unlikely that you will even want to read it all the way through.