High Financier: The Lives and Times of Siegmund Warburg

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Niall Ferguson' "High Financier" tells the extraordinary story of Siegmund Warburg, the refugee from Nazi Germany who restored the Blitz-shattered City of London as the world's preeminent international financial centre. 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, Siegmund 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. In recounting how this brilliant, scholarly man brought wit, passion and, above all, high ethical standards to the world of finance, Niall Ferguson shows how his meticulous methods were the antithesis of the debt-fuelled, speculative banking of our times. "A fascinating portrait ...Beautifully paced, dramatically subtle and psychologically shrewd ...Warburg is an emblem of money as it ought to be, and now isn't". (Bryan Appleyard, "New Statesman"). "Extensively researched and beautifully written". ("Spectator"). "A timely, original and engaging biography". ("The Times"). "Financially literate, extremely thorough, deploying dazzling breadth of cultural reference...Ferguson has produced a fine historical biography". ("Mail on Sunday"). Niall Ferguson is one of Britain's most renowned historians. He is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, a Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is the bestselling author of "Paper and Iron", "The House of Rothschild", "The Pity of War", "The Cash Nexus", "Empire", "Colossus", "The War of the World" and "The Ascent of Money".