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The Square and the Tower

Networks, Hierarchies and the Struggle for Global Power

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The Square and the Tower

By: Niall Ferguson
Narrated by: John Sackville
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About this listen

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson, read by John Sackville.

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 twenty-first 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. But networks have a dark side, 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.

Audio updated as of December 2017.

 Economic History Economics World Socialism Imperialism China Capitalism Iran Latin American Africa Middle East Middle Ages Soviet Union War Taxation Russia Social justice Imperial Japan Royalty Self-Determination Liberalism

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All stars
Most relevant
narrator was good, wasn't overly irritating or slow, good listen if you like this sort of thing and guessing you do if you're listening

long but worth it

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With a strong background in History, I found this book a magnum opus from Niall Ferguson. I enjoyed listening to how Ferguson draws from history to illustrate the conceptual clash between networks and hierarchies.

The Square and the Tower

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Fascinating story of networks with many interesting historical anecdotes. Narrating quotes in the national accent is a bit weird at first but kinda works

Heading is not in fact optional

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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/writer’s voice. Clumsy at best(for example when trying to do women’s voices) and racist at worst (e.g. doing a Chinese accent for what I assume is an English translation of original Chinese).

Good Content, Odd Narration

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A really interesting subject, great detail, very well presented. I would highly recommend this audio book.

Excellent book

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