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Title: The Square and the Tower
Subtitle: Networks, Hierarchies and the Struggle for Global Power
Author: Niall Ferguson
Narrator: John Sackville
Format: Unabridged
Length: 16 hrs and 11 mins
Language: English
Release date: 10-05-17
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 8 votes
Genres: History, World
Publisher's Summary:
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson.
What if everything we thought we knew about history was wrong? From the global best-selling author of Empire, The Ascent of Money and Civilization, this is a whole new way of looking at the world.
Most history is hierarchical: it's about popes, presidents, and prime ministers. But what if that's simply because they create the historical archives? What if we are missing equally powerful but less visible networks - leaving them to the conspiracy theorists, with their dreams of all-powerful Illuminati?
The 21st century has been hailed as the Networked Age. But in The Square and the Tower, Niall Ferguson argues that social networks are nothing new. From the printers and preachers who made the Reformation to the freemasons who led the American Revolution, it was the networkers who disrupted the old order of popes and kings. Far from being novel, our era is the Second Networked Age, with the computer in the role of the printing press. Those looking forward to a utopia of interconnected 'netizens' may therefore be disappointed. For networks are prone to clustering, contagions and even outages. And the conflicts of the past already have unnerving parallels today, in the time of Facebook, Islamic State and Trumpworld.
Members Reviews:
Heading is not in fact optional
Fascinating story of networks with many interesting historical anecdotes. Narrating quotes in the national accent is a bit weird at first but kinda works
thought provoking and timely
fascinating account of the modern state of politics seen through what Ferguson would tell us is in fact a very ancient idea, the network as the antithesis of the hierarchical order. hit it's stride in the last 3 hours when Ferguson gets on to the modern networked economy and the political situations in America and the UK
Interesting.
An intetesting analysis of diffuse phenomena of our age. Sadly, an over-arching conclusion evades the narrative - perhaps for the better.
Very Poor
What disappointed you about The Square and the Tower?
I thought this could be promising from the Title but found, for me, this relied too much on lengthy passages of writing I considered to be rather obvious; I put the book away. Perhaps I expected too much?
What could Niall Ferguson have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?
I thought the idea clever but the execution rather unoriginal.
Did the narration match the pace of the story?
The narration for me was OK but I had a problem more with the material.
What character would you cut from The Square and the Tower?
Given the chance again I just would not buy it.
Good Content, Odd Narration
The information presented was excellent, but it did seem to meander at times. For some bizarre reason, whether a choice of the producer or narrator, every time the narrator reads a quote, he does an impression of the original speaker/writers voice. Clumsy at best(for example when trying to do womens voices) and racist at worst (e.g. doing a Chinese accent for what I assume is an English translation of original Chinese).
