Pr. Jean-Marc Daniel is a professor of economics at ESCP-Europe and a lecturer at the École des Mines, Paris, and at ENSAE. An expert in the history of economic ideas, he is a regular columnist for the French daily Le Monde. He is the author of the highly successful Histoire vivante de la pensée économique (Pearson, 2010).

Jean-Marc Daniel examines 8 topics linked to current economic issues. He describes how States gradually learned to guard against bankruptcy, the imaginative feats they deployed to make citizens accept taxation, protectionism’s enduring popularity despite the proven advantages of free trade and the difficulty of finding real sustainable solutions to unemployment.

This amazing journey through history, from Roman times to the present, is as stimulating as it is instructive. With the vantage of hindsight, the author gives us several lessons and recommendations: advising central banks to stick to the monetary plan; cautioning those governments that have a tendency to favour spending over investment; rebuking those who pay lip service to solidarity while trying to shirk paying taxes.

• Economic history with a wealth of surprising details and amazing analogies.

• Contemporary economic problems through the perspective of history.

• 8 brilliant and page-turner ‘lessons’.