Reproduction of the original: Robinson Crusoe ́s Money by David A. Wells

We live in an era when coloured pieces of paper are deemed to be money. But this was not how things always were. In the United States, tobacco was money for longer than gold was. In parts of ancient India, almonds were money. Corn was money in Guatemala. In the rice-producing nations of Philippines, Japan and Burma, standardized portions of rice served as money. Salt was money in the Sahara Desert. How did these commodities disappear as money? What role did the rise of banking play in the rise of paper money? How has paper money at various points of time destroyed financial systems? And, most importantly, how do the same mistakes which were made earlier continue to be made in the modern era? Vivek Kaul answers these and many more questions in the first book in the Easy Money series.

Almost 300 years ago this fascinating novel was published with probably the most long title: The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who Lived Eight and Twenty Years, All Alone in an Un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, Near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having Been Cast on Shore by Shipwreck, Wherein All the Men Perished but Himself. With an Account how he was at last as Strangely Deliver’d by Pyrates. Written by Himself. For hundreds of years this book impresses the imagination by displaying of courage, ingenuity, vitality of the person, caught in such a binding that it is difficult to imagine. But still it is so exciting to imagine, while reading a book in a cozy room. Pretty illustrations by Vladislav Kolomoets provide you with new impressions from reading this legendary story.

With the same electrical intensity of language and insight that he brought to Waiting for the Barbarians, J.M. Coetzee reinvents the story of Robinson Crusoe—and in so doing, directs our attention to the seduction and tyranny of storytelling itself. J.M. Coetzee's latest novel, The Schooldays of Jesus, is now available from Viking. Late Essays: 2006-2016 will be available January 2018. In 1720 the eminent man of letters Daniel Foe is approached by Susan Barton, lately a castaway on a desert island. She wants him to tell her story, and that of the enigmatic man who has become her rescuer, companion, master and sometimes lover: Cruso. Cruso is dead, and his manservant, Friday, is incapable of speech. As she tries to relate the truth about him, the ambitious Barton cannot help turning Cruso into her invention. For as narrated by Foe—as by Coetzee himself—the stories we thought we knew acquire depths that are at once treacherous, elegant, and unexpectedly moving.

Daniel Defoe was one of the most prolific writers in English literature, however the canon of works attributed to him swelled from 100 to 570 titles between 1790 and the 1990s. Furbank and Owens provide a critical bibliography of Defoe's works, including evidences for ascription.

George Sturt's account of his trade as a wheelwright offers a unique glimpse into the working lives of late nineteenth century craftsmen. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.